SAGE BRUSH LEAVES 



BY 



HENRY R. MIGHELS 



SAN FRANCISCO 

Edward Bosqui & Co., Printers, cor. Clay and Leidesdorff Sts. 

1879 



^' 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 

Mrs. Henrv R. Mighels, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



I 



SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 
OF THE AUTHOR. 

By GEORGE C. GORHAM. 



ENRY R. MiGHELS, was bom at Norway, Maine, Nov. 3, 
830, and died at Carson, Nevada, May 28, 1879. His 
father was a physician of high standing, and an en- 
thusiastic and learned naturahst. Henry received a 
good academic education in Portland, where his father 
long practiced his profession. In 1847, the family re- 

Bfioved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and there he studied medi- 

^rine for a year, under his father, at the same time associ- 
ating himself with some artists, and acquiring some 
knowledge of painting in oils. Among his artist ac- 
quaintances there, was Thomas Buchanan Read, to whom 
lie often referred in after life in terms of high regard. In 

^■850, he started for California, not arriving there until he 
had, in company with a fellow-voyager, kept a hotel at 

6'Nicaragua, during a winter, and suffered for two months 
at Panama, from a prostrating tropical fever. 



I 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

From his arrival in California, in 1851, until 1856, he 
labored mainly as a sign and decorative painter, at 
Downieville, Marysville and Bidwell's Bar. In 1856, he 
commenced his editorial career as assistant editor of the 
Butte Record^ at Oroville, then a prosperous and bustling 
mining town. Attracted to the Capital by the excitement 
of the Senatorial contest which resulted in the election 
of Broderick and Gwin, he remained there to accept an 
offer as local editor of the Sacramento Bee. The exciting 
struggle of 1858, with Douglas and Broderick on the 
one side, and the administration of James Buchanan on 
the other, found him a vigorous defender of the Douglas 
side, in the columns of the Butte Record, and on the 
stump, as an anti-Lecompton candidate for the Legisla- 
ture. He was defeated with his party, but in the cam- 
paign exhibited a force and ability which gave great 
earnest of what he was to be in after years. 

In i860, the Marysville Appeal was established, and he 
became its first editor, making it politically independent, 
brilliant, witty and able. 

In i860, he visited the East, and at the home of his 
mother, at Norway, Maine, met the lady who subse- 
quently became his wife. He returned to California the 
same year. The events which immediately followed the 
Presidential election of that year controlled his career 
from that time to the end of life. He was an ardent 
Unionist, and his desire to enter the army was intense. 
As California presented no field for real activity, he went 
East early in 1862, and in May of that year, entered the 
military service. 



■ 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

His career in the army was marked by the highest 
courage, and an ahuost fanatical devotion to the cause 
involved. The following summary of it is his own, being 
an extract from a sketch of himself, written for his children 
at the request of their mother. It contains all he said 
on the subject in that biography, and its modest state- 
ment that he "was present" at the battles named conveys 
a more correct idea of his aversion to self-laudation than 
it does of the high-spirited and brilliant services rendered 
by one who would have essayed, like Hotspur, to "pluck 
bright honor from the pale-faced moon : " 

"In 1862 (April) I was commissioned by President Lincoln an 
Assistant Adjutant-General, with the rank of Captain, and assigned 
to the staff of Gen. S. D. Sturgis. I joined that officer at Fort 
Leavenworth, in Kansas. Subsequently he was assigned to the 
command of the Second Division of the Ninth (Burnside's) Corps. 
I went with him ; and served my entire term as an army officer in 
that corps. I was present at the second battle of Manassas, South 
Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg (first battle), the siege of 
Vicksburg, siege of Jackson, Mississippi, a part of the campaign in 
East Tennessee, the Battle of the Wilderness (1864), Spottsylvania, 
etc., down to Petersburg, in front of which place, on the 1 8th of 
June, 1864, I was shot through both thighs, receiving a flesh wound. 
I was removed, with many other wounded officers, to the hospital at 
Annapolis. While being treated at this place, gangrene made its 
appearance in my left thigh. I was cured, after being brought very 
low, at Baltimore. I returned to San Francisco, in the spring of 
1865. (I had been honorably discharged from the army, on account 
of disabilities occasioned by wounds received in battle, in Novem- 
l)er (or October), 1864)." 

He returned to California, in April, 1865, and shortly 
after became editor of the Carson (Nevada) Appeal, 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

During the first year, he became part owner of the paper, 
and, a few years ago, the sole proprietor, as he had been 
from the first its sole editor. 

Mr. Mighels had extraordinary native ability as an 
artist, w^hich only lacked development by culture and the 
advantages by which men of less ability obtain renown. 
There is no doubt in the minds of those who could ap- 
preciate his unpretentious efforts wnth brush and pencil, 
that he possessed a power and originality which even an 
ordinary observer could detect in his sketches from na- 
ture. These were true transcripts, and treated in so bold 
and original a manner, as to stamp them as all his ow-n. 
The sketches he produced indicate that had he studied 
to become a painter, he might have succeeded beyond 
the anticipations of anyone who knew him. 

August 20, 1866, he was married to Miss Verrill ; and 
to her, and the four children born to them, he was pas- 
sionately devoted, making his wife his partner and confi- 
dential adviser in all his affairs, whether of politics or 
business. 

From t866 to 1878 inclusive, his great force of mmd 
and his political sagacity, which grew^ with every contest, 
until he became a consummate organizer and leader of 
men and of opinion, were enlisted in the cause of the 
Republican party. In the election to the United States 
Senate of Nye in 1867, Stewart in 1869, Jones in 1873, 
Sharon in 1875, and Jones again in 1879, his strong will, 
ready resources, and powerful personal influence w^ere 
elements of commanding importance. In 1868, he was 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

chosen State Printer. In 1876, he was elected from 
Ormsby County to the Assembly, of which body he was 
chosen Speaker by acclamation. This unusual tribute 
was well bestowed, for in the Speaker's chair, he instantly 
and as if by intuition, brought to its duties the same 
brilliant rapidity of intellectual processes, and the same 
strong sense and spirit of control, which he had shown 
in other places. At the end of the session, at which his 
rulings were uniformly sustained, he was presented with 
different testimonials by the two parties and the attaches. 

In 1878, he was the nominee of the Republican party 
for Lieutenant-Governor. He was the leader of the party 
in the canvass, and his grand enthusiasm carried all be- 
fore it, except that by reason of treachery within the 
party, he was himself defeated. This undeserved and 
unnatural blow from those who should have been strong 
in his support, was not sufficient to break or diminish 
his spirit. The session showed that it did not impair 
his influence. He organized and led a very power- 
ful movement in that body, for the regulation of freights 
and fares on the railroads of the State. Though the 
measure did not succeed, the marvelous exhibition of 
pluck, will and organization made by our friend, called 
forth every resource of his antagonists to prevent it. 

Mr. Mighels was a writer of great versatility. In his 
writings will be found vehement appeal, subtle argument, 
fierce invective and crushing irony, when foes were to be 
dealt with, while, in the presence of Nature, he was full 
of sweetest poetry, and at the call of human sufferings 
and wrongs, as gentle and kindly as Mercy itself 



MEMOIR OK THK AUTHOR. 

Though not a book-worm, his busy intellect craved and 
enjoyed reading. He read the modern scientists, anc 
rehshed the labor they gave his mind ; but his temperaJ 
ment was rather of the poetical and emotional than or 
the material and practical sort. Heroic enterprises at- 
tracted liim' more than abstract speculations. Among 
political writings, he liked much the fiery addresses of the 
early anti-slavery agitators, especially those of Phillips 
and Parker. Of the essayists, Macaulay and Froude 
pleased him most. Of new books he was a devourer, 
and could, with great readiness, and with freshness and 
originality of expression, give his views concerning them. 
When action was required, he used the pen powerfully to 
inspire others with his own s})irit. When he could take 
mental rest, Charles Lamb, Henry Thoreau and William 
W. Story were among his favorite authors, and he seemed 
to partake somewhat of the nature of each. In this 
book will be found many passages to justify this state- 
ment. It is a compilation of letters, notes and queries 
and brief essays, written for his paper in his best moods, 
but with little thought of preservation elsew^here than in 
its columns. They were his recreations, and were often 
merely talks for his nearest friends rather than for general 
readers. They will be found to embrace delightful de- 
scriptions of natural scenery, pleasant and humorous 
sketches of every-day life, and here and there bits of 
ethics and metaphysics, just enough to show that he 
was deeply thoughtful, without being dogmatic or pre- 
sumptuous. 



MKiMOIR OF THE AU'J'HOR. 

The book vvas compiled after his physician had decided 
that the deadly foe of his life, which had reappeared, 
despite the surgeon's knife, could not be removed. 

He had at times during the past year or more enter- 
tained a thought of making a book, but it never assumed 
the form of a determination with him until death came 
near, when he turned to it in the hope that such a publi- 
cation might help to take care of his wife and children 
when he could no longer be with them. To its prepara- 
tion the latest efforts of his life were given. 

He died as he had lived, exhibiting to his wife, and to 
friends around him, a character full of tenderness and 
bravery, loyalty and truth. 




PREFACE. 

^Vhat is contained in this volume ought to have been 
left to its native obscurity, within the seldom sought files 
of a small daily newspaper of limited circulation, if it 
does not, of itself, explain its appearance in book form. 

Just as the portrait-painter, whose professional tasks 
demand of him the doing of a certain routine work, while 
seekmg for inspiration in the dull faces of listless sitters, so 
with the journalist of all work — the up-country editor. 
None but those of the guild know what this hard-driven 
drudge has to do and to suffer. Leaving out of consid- 
eration his poverty and his usefulness — both of which are 
proverbial — let us be reminded of what he is and what 
he does : 

He does everything, and must, therefore, know every- 
thing. So he is many-sided and never-to-be-excused : 
judge, jury and bar; physician, apothecary and nurse; 
actor, scene-painter and property-man ; preacher and 
pew-opener ; critic and master of ceremonies ; an alma- 
nac, a dictionary, and an oiiniitni i^at/ien/ui. 



VI PREFACE. 

In the morning, this man of many parts and stents 
must face his exchanges, scissors on thmnb and paste- 
pot within reach ; in the midst of manifold distractions he 
must (professional pride compelling), compose the inevi- 
table '' Leader ;" and, as events pass, and the dull town is 
wakened and amused with the petty goings and comings 
of its dwellers and its guests, he must make much of little, 
and meet his destiny, note-book in hand, as a ''brief 
and abstract chronicle of the time." Obituaries, reports 
of squabbles, great and small ; sermons and circuses ; 
essays and advertisements ; puffs and critiques ; disquisi- 
tions upon art, and prognostics of the weather ; rehgion, 
politics and law ; everything big and everything little, 
this is his world, world without end ! 

May not then, the least of these, my Brethren, find 
excuse if, in self-sought relief from this crazing hurly- 
burly, he takes refuge even in such poor, scrappy, wan- 
dering meditations as are herewith grouped together? 
And may he not find grace and pardon this side of the 
all-merciful gods, if he (with becoming diffidence), sees 
fit to gather them together as these are gathered, within 
the awful lids of that dread maker and unmaker of mortal 
authorship, the binder who bi-ndeth books ? 



DEDICATION. 



The odds and ends which make up this small volume 
were got into their present shape with much substantial 
assistance of scissors and paste ; but they originated 
legitimately enough (as things go), in the due course of 
newspaper drudgery, done within the shade of the 
domestic vine and fig-tree. The rather unusual circum- 
stance is to be noted that the 'V.opy," from which they 
were first printed, passed at arm's length from the writer 
to the compositor, who also sat, while at work "at the 
case," under the shade aforesaid. 

I dedicate this book, with due dehberation, to that 
very accessible compositor. 

Thirteen years ago (come August), that printer and 
this writer became partners for better and for worse, by 
the help of Rev. Dr. Stebbins ; and so the domestic nature 
of our work, as also the propriety of this dedication be- 
come apparent to the reader. 



H. R. M. 



Carson, Nevada, 
April 14, 1879. 




CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Notes and Queries, . ii 

More Notes and Queries, 23 

Learning to Smoke, . . . . . . .37 

The Little Men, . 49 

The Confessions of a Bibliomaniac, .... 61 

PiuTEs, Milliners and Boys, 75 

Somewhat Owlish, 87 

Gleanings, 99 

Dates and Mare's Milk, ...... 109 

A Chapter on Canes, etc. . . . . . 121 

Tom Thumb, etc. . . 131 

Something Critical, 141 

Random Shots, 155 

Scraps, 165 

Finding Money in the Ashes, 177 

Our Good Talkers of the Far West. . . . 189 

Blue Monday, 203 

Man as a Barometer, 217 

Letters from Lake Bigler, 231 

Letters from San Francisco, 257 

Letters from the French Hospital, .... 273 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 




SAGE BRUSH LEAVES. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 

C UPPOSE, when the headUne of these fragments was 
under consideration (as if it ever were seriously con- 
sidered), instead of choosing the unpretending and light- 
some, though not unsuggestive good old form of Notes 
and Queries (which somehow always reminds one of 
Froissart, De Quincey and the Old Curiosity Shop, all at 
once), this Inquisitor had adopted such a hard, exacting 
flourish as Short Studies on Great Subjects, what a tre- 
mendous task it would be to make the context come up 
to the grandeur of the title, and how sharper than a ser- 
pent's tongue needs must be the point of the pointed 
stick with which any respectable number even of our 
Constant Readers might be fetched up to their "stent of 
perusing them, day by day. If one presumes to write on 
Great Subjects he must never be caught dallying with 
any small wares of the nature of those which the puff- 
monger, or the gossip-retailer, or the small-talker of daily 
journalism is licensed to dispense. What is called dig- 



14 NOTES AND QUERIES. 

nity is an awful weight, at all events, and under ever 
circumstance ; and one would rather be plain Bob o 
Seth or Bart than be banished to the owlish realms of 
official or personal importance, handicapped with a sur- 
plusage of that imposing magnificence which brings one 
up with a round turn under the enforcement of the bond 
that *^ noblesse obhge.'' If this Notary's brief memory 
serves, this column has not been deemed too exclusive or 
lofty or grandiferous to deal with bees and ants and even 
grub- worms and caterpillars. One of these days we shall 
be moved, no doubt, to write a chapter on Dogs ; a 
treatise on the Dissolute Habits as developed in the 
propensity of the Common Toad, for roaming about after 
Nightfall ; a discourse on the Obstinate Willfulness of 
Sittmg Hens, or what not. We value the license we 
have taken, and mean to extend its scope rather than be 
circumscribed. Rarey, the horse-tamer, once remarked 
in reply to the query, If he thought that horses thought, 
that he knew they did. He was just as positive of it as 
if he had seen the equine mental processes at work as 
palpably as a coffee mill. We like his notion. We be- 
lieve he is right. How much similarity is there between 
the language of yon raw Chinaman and this fellow-citizen 
from the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument ? Is there 
any more resemblance than there is between the braying 
of an ass and the singing of a meadow lark ? And yet 
that native of the Celestial Empire thinks of turnips and 
bread and boots and rice and bathing and bedding and 
dying just as clearly as your Boston man. God knows 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 1 5 

what word he thinks of when he thinks turnips, what sen- 
tence mashes through his chocolate-colored brain when 
he contemplates bread and butter and tea and sugar, 
what awful jaw-breakers seize upon the convolutions of 
his cerebrum when he is vexed with the problems and 
emergencies of his infrequent ablutions or his final doom, 
but he does, no doubt, '^ tackle " each of those objects 
or ideas with quite as much directness as if his skin were 
white, his hair auburn and his eyes nearer parallel to the 
line of the horizon. And so, a horse. That sagacious and 
useful quadruped just as certainly thinks ''oats "as his mas- 
ter or his groom does ; only the horse, in his superior way, 
has no need for any little complaining word, made out of 
the rude materials of somebody's spelling book. The idea 
is there among the rest of his stock of horse sense ; and 
if the skeptic thinks we are whimsical and absurd, let him 
test the first horse he can find — test him with a fork-full 
of hay and a hat-full of grain, and see if the beast don't 
know the difference and indicate his choice. If a dog 
does not think, what makes him dream ? If a cat does 
not think, what makes her teach herself not only to come 
straight to the kitchen door to get into the house, but lift 
the latch and open the way for herself? Instinct ? Well, 
isn't that an evasion, a dodging of the question, another 
name for thinking ? Don't your dog know you and your 
habits, and when you have got as much as your small 
wine-bearing capacity will carry ? We know a dog who 
knows when Sunday comes ; a hen who will, in spite of 
all obstacles, lay her eggs on the boys' bed ; a cat who is 



1 6 NOTES AND QUERIES. 

acquainted with his most sympathetic friend, and inter- 
prets his thoughts — not only thinks, but interprets ! And 
we know a chipmunk who won't hsten to the reading of 
prose, but who has an absolute passion for hearing one 
read Tennyson, Browning, Shakspeare or Lucy Larcomb ! 
Here, then, is the religious emotion ; the incentive to 
order and the fitness of things ; the capacity for harbor- 
ing sentiments of a lofty and ennobling character ; and 
the critical gift — all within the hmits of one brief domes- 
tic experience. Wordsworth had a pet carp which knew 
him and delighted to rub its scaly side against his fluffy 
palm. Next Spring, when the birds begin to build their 
nests — the wrens and the orioles, for example — take 
pains to watch them awhile, and when you come away 
ask yourself if they do not think what they are doing, 
where they shall do it, and what they shall do it with. 
Watch Mr. Yellow Jacket mix his mortar, and make his 
paper, and construct his queer grey house. Do you not 
suppose he thinks where he is going to when he sallies out 
for ^^ more mud ? " Or does a stock-gambler monopolize 
all the thinking demanded by an emergency which calls 
for such seekings and findings ? 

And so it is not impossible to find a legitimate employ- 
ment for one's leisure hours in something less that Great 
Subjects, treated either as Mr. Froude delightfully treats 
them, or as they are handled and labored-over and pre- 
sented with something of dreary reiteration on the sec- 
ond page of innumerable daily newspapers. Oh ! the 
treadmill (on the next page there) ; how it does go on 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 1 7 

and on ; how it does exact and exact, and demand and 
and demand ; and how rusty it gets, but never any less, 
tiresome ; how it is a bully and a taskmaster and a brist- 
ling, browbeating, belaboring braggart ! One may get 
over here, next to the comfortable, happy-go-lucky, easy 
localman's columns and say what he likes, like any other 
careless truant. Talk of Great Subjects ; look at Sir 
Plantagenet Goosequill, how he crushes Russia and wipes 
out Montenegro ; how he smashes slates and purifies the 
political air ; how he hurls the catapult of his opinions 
against the walls of heresy and ignorance ; how he holds 
science in one hand and art in the other ; how lightly he 
wields the ponderous muniments of the law, and with 
what a master touch he disposes of Senates and tosses 
about the destinies of the Republic and the Future of 
the Human Race. Ah 1 but the editorial page is too 
often like John Calvin's heaven — there is no " wanton 
daUiance " there. All is grand ; all is profundity ; nothing 
is short of a Short Study on a Great Subject. And the 
worst of it all is that the treadmill must do these things. 
That's what it is made for. But do not be impatient, 
dear fellow truant. One of these days we will revive 
The Boy's Own Book, mayhap calling it, for fun, a Sage 
Brush Magazine, in which shall be noted what we all 
take a fancy for noting down, and wherein we will each 
of us query what we want to quiz one another about. 
The trouble is that it is so much harder work for you and 
me to express what we think than it is for the horse or 
the dog or the cat or the barnyard-fowl, or the beast and 



l8 NOTES AMD QUERIES. 

birds of the field and the air, that we must have some 
sort of artificial vehicle Hke types and paper and printer's 
ink. Somebody once wisely said that the true way to 
employ power is to seem not to possess it. 

Forster, in his life of Dickens, says that the Great 
Humorist, although he so much liked to write of the 
pleasures of the social glass and the dinner party was 
really an almost abstemious man. His fancy, pleasantly 
sharpened, was present at imaginary carousals and gor- 
mandizings from which himself would have turned away. 
It is the genial humor of the thing, the pleasant thrall- 
dom of the imagination which possesses one. The ac- 
tual experience palls upon the taste and coats the tongue 
and blurs the eye. There is the difference between the 
dream and the experience ; between the anticipation and 
the having. And so, perhaps, true to the condition which 
" never is, but always to be, blest ; " harboring the dream, 
and never going beyond the yet unhmned plans of our 
Castle in Spain ; never ceasing to be loyal to the hopes 
born of our fancies and always looking toward the 
brighter day beyond, we may never see our conceits as- 
sume a substantial form as between the covers of such a 
thing as one might call The Scrapbook. 

It is no wonder history repeats itself. Nature — em- 
bracing human nature and all other sorts and conditions 
of life, is constantly reproducing its effects, its likes, its 
unlikes, its phenomena and its oddities. History, so 
called, being the recordation of mundane events, but fol- 
lows the universal law, then, in thus presenting us with 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 1 9 

repetitions. When those of us who are old enough to 
have had contemporaneous knowledge of Fremont's dar- 
ing venture into the wilderness, watching him from afar 
and learning of his exploits and perils day by day, thought 
at all of this Great American Basin, we thought of it in 
every other light than that in which stands in all his 
peculiarities the corner lounger and street inspector. The 
man of leisure, the idler, the fellow who manages to dress 
well and eat well and preserve (oh, lucky dog !), without 
work or toil or care of any sort, a condition of respecta- 
bility in outward attire, is not the kind of man we natu- 
rally associate with a new and sparsely settled country 
like this Nevada of ours. We somehow classify these not 
unamiable gentry with the older and greater cities, and 
let our imagination people these newer settlements with 
a hardier, more industrious and more seriously-occupied 
race than such as breeds the vagabondish and the idle. 

But, as we are always bragging, this is the poor man's 
paradise. Poverty brings no disgrace, nor does unoffend- 
ing idleness. And why should it, pray ? If my Chevalier 
d'Industrie has learned the art of living without work 
why should he not so live? Who shall say him nay and 
belabor him for a vagrant and a drone? What is life made 
for? What is the aim of human existence ? Is not happi- 
ness and contentment the chief end ? We have no com- 
plaint for your true Fellow of the College of Indolence. 
He is a man of taste ; knows something of letters ; is 
almost dilettante in his notions of the proprieties, the 
harmonies and the graces of life. He is ready to inject 



20 NOTES AND QUERIES. 

into the brain of your dull, plodding blockhead, some 
gratuitous ideas of propriety ; and so he is an instructor, 
and thus earns a right of wine and bread. The severity 
of his tastes checks the riotous, the rude and the clown- 
ish ; and this abates indecency and commands the peace. 
This part of his office entitles him to the full, unstinted 
privilege of a public pensioner. Your genuine street 
critic is never indecorous. His profanity, even in private, 
is of the reflected, qualified, less shocking sort. He is a 
not unworthy example, even to his betters. He never 
begs, is never greedy, never intrusive, never violent, never 
quarrelsome. His notions of what should constitute the 
bearing of a gentleman toward all persons of the opposite 
sex are eminently proper, even to the verge of chivalry 
and punctilio. Of course he is a generous drinker ; for 
he knows wines and spirits, and may safely be trusted to 
instruct you of the quality of your cellarage. He greets 
you as an equal, observing the propriety, always, of your 
surname. He is above the vulgarity of an over-familiar 
habit. His self respect renders this impossible. How 
does he live ? This is not our concern. We will not seek 
to penetrate the veil. We recognize him, with thankful- 
ness, as a beneficent, welcome, cleverly-ordered piece of 
street ornamentation — as good in his way as a fountain 
or a statue ; — a restraining influence, a seer, a critic and 
a purifier. He is not an individual — we make no hints 
of the actuals, pursue no models, — but he is generic, uni- 
versal, an original element, no more a phenomenon than 
dull respectability whose rebuking spirit and censor he 



f 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 21 

is. He has servile imitators ; but these, Hke all shams, 
are intolerable. But he, himself, sees to it that no rude 
words are uttered in the presence of any lady ; and he 
makes the avenues as safe for self-respecting women, 
night and day, as if he were a guard of honor. May he 
be continued long in the land of his usefulness. We can 
better be rid of a gooder man ! 

We spoke of ^'this Nevada of ours." We counsel no 
extravagance, and we learned to reckon constitutional 
conventions in that category. But we could (and would) 
heartily justify the calling together, by authority, of a 
College of Nomenclature — a State Institute of Philology 
whose first duty it should be to relegate " Nevada" to 
that county in the parent State, yonder, where it be- 
longs. We would strike out '' Nevada," and substitute 
Washoe, and thus begin the world with a name of our 
own, something native and aboriginal,— a propagating, 
virile noun and not a mere sexless adjective. What if 
we have said all this before ? It was by frequent itera- 
tion and reiteration that those who stood in Congress for 
the right of petition got a final recognition. Give us a 
bit of aboriginal substantivity for a name among the sov- 
ereign States, and not a lisp of ill-understood, second- 
hand Spanish. 



r 



MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 

T OYALTY is the manfullest of all the composite vir- 
"^^ tues. It is loyalty which makes a school boy take 
a hcking rather than tell who it was that put the shoe- 
maker's wax in the master's chair; it is loyalty which 
makes young men true to young women and induces 
them to keep their promise with them even after the oc- 
currence of an inevitable mishap ; it is loyalty which 
makes fellows stick together after getting out into the 
world and finding out one another's good and bad parts. 
It was Grant's loyalty that made him treat Lee like a 
brother West Pointer when the latter was brought to a 
surrender; it was loyalty which made Thomas Huxley 
tell the students of Aberdeen University that he was a 
plebeian who stood by his order ; and it is loyalty to his 
fellows and to himself which makes this Notary like and en- 
joy the tone and temper of a recent article in the Cornhill 
Magazine entited An Apology for Idlers. It is high 
time that we whose dwelling place is upon the outskirts of 
the region of Vagabondage had a champion. We have 
been bullied and scowled at and pointed out as dreaful 
examples by the studious, the exemplary and the hard- 
workers quite long enough. We had heard of this splen- 



26 MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 

did article before we actually came upon it, and were 
prepared to like it. See with what true courage and un- 
shrinking frankness it begins : ^' Just now/' says the 
writer, '' when everyone is bound, under pain of a decree 
in absence of convicting them of /ese respectability, to 
enter on some lucrative profession, and labor therein with 
something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the 
opposite party who are content when they have enough, 
and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savors a 
little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should 
not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in 
doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized 
in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as 
good a right to state its position as industry itself" Now 
that is spoken as by a man after this Querist's own heart. 
There is, moreover, something of the sweet, rebellious 
tone of Charles Lamb about it, and an intelligent stur- 
diness which reminds one of Henry Thoreau. We Hke 
this Apologist when he tells us, with true heroism, that 
" Books are good enough in their own way, but they are 
a mighty bloodless substitute for life." He sympathises 
with that greatest of French reviewers, Sainte Beauve, in 
his discovery, made in the later years of his life, that all 
experience is like unto a single great book in which to 
study a few years ere we go hence ; ^^and it seemed all one 
to him whether you should read in chapter XX., which is 
the differential calculus, or in chapter XXXIX., which is 
hearing the band play in the gardens." At last, impa- 
tient of the unreasonableness of the conditions which he 



MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 27 

finds insisted on, on all sides, this valorous insurgent 
from the down-trodden Idlers exclaims, ^'And what in God's 
name is all this pother about ? For what cause do they 
(the incessant workers), embitter their own and other peo- 
ple's lives ? That a man should publish three or thirty ar- 
ticles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great 
allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the 
world. The ranks of life are full ; and although a thou- 
sand fall, there are always some to go into the breach. 
When they told Joan of Arc she should be at home 
minding women's work, she answered there were plenty 
to spin and wash. And so, even with your own rare gifts! 
when nature is ^ so careless of the single life,' why should 
we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of ex- 
ceptional importance? Suppose Shakspeare had been 
knocked in the head some dark night in Sir Thomas 
Lucy's preserves, the world would have wagged on, bet- 
ter or worse, the pitcher have gone to the well, the 
scythe to the corn, and the student to his book ; and no 
one been any wiser for the loss. There are not many 
books extant, if you look the alternative all over, which 
are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of 
limited means." Hurrah ! for a champion ! As Cata- 
line is made to say, " I held some slack allegiance till 
this hour, but now my sword's my own ?" There are 
" books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good 
in everything." This bluff and hearty loyalty to some- 
thing other than that which lies within the sacred bounds 
of conventionality and custom ; which dares to speak a 



28 MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 

word for that genial side of life where one is found turn- 
ing his back on cankering care and money-making and the 
mines of racking thought ; which takes time to consider 
the lilies how they grow, and takes note and receives as- 
surance in the fact that they neither toil nor spin nor are 
gathered into barns, this comes very near the heart of such 
as are weary of a constant pressure in one dull direction, 
an intensity of pursuit toward one weary goal, a life which 
is all exact, all serious, all beset with the iron lines of 
prescribed and formulated duty. The Master stood 
apart from mere lifeless forms and had the sublime cour- 
age to violate the hard exactions of the Jewish Sabbath ; 
and broke through the settled pretentiousness of haggard 
custom when he did pluck the ears of corn and bade his 
disciples take and eat. That which nature has laid out 
before us in her generous lap is not to be outweighed by 
any of man's rules or shamed by any of his books, his 
precepts or his theories. He who muses quietly under 
the shade of a shrub, looking with his own wondering eyes 
into the constant miracle of the very sand and unheeded 
weeds and giving thought to the winds and the sunlight 
as they find him out ; idles to some purpose. It is this 
description of a man who might be expected to have the 
spirit to resent the epithet of " melancholy" bestowed by 
some of the poets upon the ocean, and exclaim with a 
writer in The Spectator : 

Oh! the salt Atlantic breezes, 
How they sweep reviving through me ; 
How their freshening spirit seizes 
Soul and sense, to raise, renew me! 



MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 29 

The air and the sunshine, the flowers and the far 
stretches of violet landscape, the things which are beside 
the path and under our feet, these are worth as much of 
our attention as the leaves of printer's work or the tasks 
which are baited for us by wealth, ambition and power. 

As people without any musical capacities admire the 
performances of players and singers ; as the blind respect 
those who can see, the lame those who can walk and the 
deaf those who can hear, so do modest people feel a 
sense of wonderment which is akin to admiration for 
those who ask, without any backwardness or hesitation 
for what they want, regardless of the small side-question, 
if what they want is what's their due. There are times 
when this patient and submissive Notary wishes from the 
bottom of his heart, that there never was and never could 
be any such thing or custom or necessity for what goes 
under the fraudulent title of The Credit System. It is 
one thing to sit under the shadow of books and old MSS., 
and collect such odds and ends of whims, facts and fan- 
cies as these N's and Q's ; and it is quite another thing to 
collect the dribs and doles of money due a somewhat 
threadbare and mouldy newspaper concern like a certain 
(morning) paper it is needless to specify. It is true mod- 
esty which makes the business of collecting a burden and 
a mournful duty. It is the shyness of asking for one's 
own that cannot be overcome. The only consoling boon 
is the opportunity, as in some cases offered, of being 
confronted with a bill per contra (and a trifle over.) That 
is to say, the pang of dunning is more than compensated 



30 MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 

for by the countervail of being dunned ! We are con- 
vinced that what is vulgarly called " cheek " is a gift — 
like being '^double-jointed" or having six fingers on one 
hand. There are, apparently, (for we are without expe- 
rience) two distinct sorts of '' cheek." One is of the cul- 
tivated variety and of the brass, brassy. The other is 
native, simple, unpretending, guileless — such as was dis- 
played the other day at Washington by the noble red 
man. Let the reader be reminded of what was done at 
this conference of the red and white braves : Big Rood 
in his speech expressed a desire to come to Washington 
once a year at the expense of the government. He 
wanted i,ooo head of cattle and i,ooo head of sheep; 
he also wanted a box of money — not paper money, but 
silver, the '' dollar of his daddy." Another expressed a 
desire for a school in which he could learn to read and 
write and telegraph. He was particular in his wish to 
become a telegraph operator. Little Wound wanted 
white sugar and better coffee ; he wanted also two six- 
horse wagons, a four-horse wagon, and a house like that 
the President hved in. He desired religion as well, and 
Catholic priests instead of Episcopalians, who are at the 
agency. Big Rood ^nd Little Wound are after this Que- 
rist's own heart. In his modest and retiring way he feels 
privileged to admire the simple son of the wilderness 
who steps up with child-like assurance and asks for bands 
of cattle, boxes of money, a well appointed wagon and 
team, a White House and White Sugar ! What is the 
use of being mealy-mouthed when one is going to ask 



MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 3 1 

for what he wants ? It is all very well to say that if a 
thing is worth having it is worth asking for ; but the next 
time, oh young-men-afraid-of-your-sweetheart, that you 
want to kiss your charmer, don't ask to be permitted to 
do it, but go right up, like a man of nerve and courage 
and self-assertion and take it, vi et arm is ^ if necessary. 
She may flutter and protest and threaten as she may, she 
cannot rob you of it nor wipe it off ! Like the boy Punch 
tells of, all she can do is to rub it in ! (But let not this 
blushing Notary be misunderstood.) Let no man with 
conscience burdened with a load of debt to the Morn- 
ing Appeal lay the flattering unction to his soul that be- 
cause of the coyness and shrinking diffidence of this 
Scribe he is gomg to turn from the performance of his 
duty ; " The bravest are the tenderest ; the loving are 
the daring ! " 

A PLEA FOR THE NE'eR-DO-WEELS. 

There are wide researches of humanity ; vast agglom- 
erations of mankind ; entire civilizations, in fact, within 
which one of the phases of practical Charity is lost. 
What is the name of that queer little muscle which 
Nature has given the human facial structure for the 
purpose of moving the ear, as a horse or dog moves 
his? Well, we cannot call to mind the name of it just 
now, but it is quite as well as if we could. There is such 
a muscle, so the physiologists say ; and it serves to illus- 
trate our fancy — which is, that the exercise or employ- 
ment of this particular phase of Charity we are talking of 



32 MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 

has been lost to certain communities by its own pro 
longed desuetude. We mean the unorganized but still 
potent charitableness of feeHng which not only excuses 
but actually sanctions and protects the vagabondish, the 
idle, the non-producers — Les Miserables. Somehow we| 
are all of us too well known to one another — we fortune 
hunters and soldiers of fortune of the earlier days — to be 
safe in the assumption of any very superior virtues. It 
is not so many years since we were strangers to all banks 
and bank accounts, all the pretentiousness and all the 
glamour of ^'society," all the assumptions and require 
ments of polished intercourse ; it is only too well within th 
memory of your castaway when he was the open-handed,j 
Robin Goodfellow, and the now more fortunate Sir Kas- 
simere Broadcloth served him his bacon and potatoei 
and was not too high-spirited to render him the nimbi 
obsequiousness of his very humble servant — tho' th 
sycophancy never was asked. We are all of the sam 
household, as it were, and are known to one another fo; 
what we are are worth, and stand upon our merits an 
not our pretensions. Moreover your *' flint mill" is noi 
without its value as a school. It has great virtue in that] 
it shakes the snob out of a man and makes the manners 
of the parvenu sit awkwardly upon him. 

And so the unfortunate and the down-grade folk (poor 
fellows) and even the vicious and scampish, ah, indeed t 
and even the thieves and the man-killers, these are no 
subjected to any oppressive reprehension. The *' pale'' 
of society is a loose afl'air with none to keep it in orde 



MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 33 

or insist upon its maintenance, and the law against va- 
grancy is a dead-letter so far as our own cherished drones 
are concerned — as it ought to be. The wretchedness of 
homelessness is dreadful enough in itself without being 
jeered at and persecuted by the comfortable and the do- 
mesticated. Am I my brother's keeper ? There was our 
unlucky friend. Ton St. Clair. (We are not going to preach 
any pharisaical sermon over him. He was as well-be- 
haved a man, in our knowledge of him, as many who 
have stolen more and lived nearer the precious presence 
of Mrs. Potiphar.) He went to his death and his grave, 
the other day, friendless, homeless, with never any sym- 
pathy, never any mourners, never any property for people 
to squabble over and lie about. Who shall blame him? 
Who will upbraid his cold ashes and thank God they 
are not like this friendless man whose lone life was so 
bitter ? Oh my friends, we are what we are, and each 
plays his little part and goes his small way and does his 
appointed task for better or for worse and no man may 
stand above his neighbor's grave and say, '' his life could 
have been better spent, but he would not." What makes 
Peter Ploughman the untiring worker that he is, and yet 
denies him the high capacity to lead the affairs of his 
State ? If Lazy Lawrence does not incline to work, how 
shall he acquire an mclination ? Can any man by so wish- 
ing add a cubit unto his stature? Will an effort of the 
will make a voiceless man a singer, or a color-blind man 
a painter, or a doubting man a believer ? As well say 
that the health of the body is a matter of the will, as 



34 MORE NOTES AND QUERIES. 

that the health of the mind— the impulse of exertion ( 
the genius of application and the studious habit are 
subject to the motions of that mysterious agency. Is 
not the desire for advancement an inborn quality ? Are 
not ambition and high aiming begotten of parentage 
and pedigree and blood ? And shall not a lazy father 
beget an indolent son, and he beget sons and daughters 
after his kind ? Can you kindle a fire of the incombus- 
tible ? And shall the slothful man cause himself to desire 
that which he desires not to desire ? Here was a home- 
less man. One mav say, inconsiderately, that he was 
lacking in domestic instincts; that he preferred idleness 
and the paths of the vicious and the association of the 
lawless. How do you know that, Oh, judge ? How dp 
you know but that he yearned with a " Hfe long hunger 
in his heart '' for that to which he never could attain ? 
Who knows what he suffered and how he longed for rest 
and comfort and the kindly hand— the hand as kind 
or half as kind as his mother's was ? Who can tell 
what were his self-denials and his struggles ? Perhaps he 
wrought with himself and tried to shape a stubborn and 
unyielding nature to the ways and walks of the luckier. 

Luck, did we say ? Do you not believe in it, O en- 
lightened skeptic ? But this Notary does. He believes 
that some men's lives are marked for pleasant places ; 
that some are born to wealth and power and ease and a 
life of happiness and success ; and he believes that some 
are launched upon seas of distress and crime, and the 
pains and penalties of idleness and homelessness and 
punishment and despair. 



r 



MORE NOTE AND QUERIES. 



35 



Take the good things that He in your pleasant path, 
my son, and pity those who are less fortunate ; but be- 
ware lest you confound misfortune with something w^orse, 
and harden your heart with the bitter dregs of uncharity. 
There were those in his time who held aloof from Cole- 
ridge as from a skeptic and a doubter ; but it was he who 
said : 

He prayeth best who loveth best 

All things both great and small ; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all. 




LEARNING TO SMOKE. 




LEARNING TO SMOKE. 



'T^IMES change, and we are changed with them, says 
the old Latin proverb. Ourselves are changed just 
as all men in their course of life have been changed ; 
and the garrulous grandfathers of Shakspeare's time 
found as much fault with everything young and new as 
the grannies of both sexes do to-day. This Notary feels 
himself impelled to write something lecture-like and severe 
on the vice of smoking by little boys. To be sure there 
come up certain self-accusations which modify the severity 
of the tone to be adopted, and even cause some doubts to 
arise as to the utility of such sermonizings. There is an 
experience inseparable from the early life of many a man 
now moral grown and susceptible to the sights and 
shocks of depravity. It is the experience of his first real 
smoke. Nobody who is rightly constructed but recollects 
the first time that he smoked a stem of rattan, bravely 
taking the risk of ^' drying up his blood " by so doing. 
Every ambitious boy chewed prepared liquorice with a 
swagger, cheating himself and his horror-stricken but yet 
admiring sisters into the delusion that he was chewing 
tobacco. But these puerile weaknesses antedate, as im- 
memorials, the solemn epoch when the lad first ventures, 



40 LEARNING TO SMOKE. 

with the air of a hero and the stealthy step of a smug- 
gler, to puff his first '' long nine." 

The dramatis personse are a tough customer of a feller 
who has already learned to smoke ; a smaller and less 
tough feller who is well over his first lessons, and is cor- 
respondingly proud and consequential ; and yourself, the 
aspiring novitiate, with courage screwed up to the requi- 
site pitch of wicked hardihood to cut loose, by one des- 
])erate effort, from so much of the maternal apron-strings 
as hold you from making the experiment in public. The 
scene is laid in the deserted back-yard of the school 
house. Time, the gloaming of Saturday. Bolivar Hard- 
head, the accomplished smoker aforesaid, has already got 
his cigar lighted and is puffing it with energy, and ex- 
plaining, as he knocks off the long protuberance of black 
and gray ashes at the fire-end, how one can tell a good 
cigar from a bad one, also that the ashes are good for 
certain disorders of the stomach and viscera. The prom- 
ising student aforementioned is rewarded for his profi- 
ciency and patience with the gift of a well-proportioned 
stub; and more than tempted, even fascinated, by the 
enjoyment before him, contraband though it be, you pro- 
duce at length the requisite subsidiary coins wherewith 
can be purchased as many as three fresh cigars from the 
tobacconist. The lesser smoker performs the errand and 
the three cigars are soon alight. At this late day of your 
variegated life, oh sympathetic reader, you call to mind 
;(and stomach) the experience of that eventful twilight. 
There was the excitement of the clandestine meeting; 



LEARNING TO SMOKE. 4I 

there was the swelHng pride of budding youth and the 
ambition to be free and untrammeled ; and there was 
the final plunge into the forbidden pool of delight- 
some sin. You see yourself there in that old school 
house yard, seated on the turf, your back against the 
bricks, and your voice in a whisper as you talk with your 
guilty companions. Your cigar is lighted. You have 
taken a dozen puffs. You feel a new and a grateful stimu- 
lation. Your timidity has all gone and you are courage- 
ous as never before. You begin to share the feeling of 
contempt with which Bolivar Hardhead speaks of poor 
little Tommy Whiteface when he got so sick from his 
first smoke. Very soon you begin to experience a desire 
to be more quiet. Somehow the hilarity of the hour be- 
gins to pall upon you. You continue to smoke your 
cigar and seem to enjoy it. Oh you wicked, wicked 
hypocrite, how you are shamming ! How you are lying 
to yourself, and trying to deceive Bolivar and his loyal 
student. How you wish you were at home, and how you 
dread to go there ! You are wretched beyond all ex- 
pression ; sick unto death. Death ? Death is a sweet 
and balmy rest compared with this hopeless agony. And 
then when you have sought the relief of the pump and 
the cooler air and the reproving grass, and the stars have 
come out and the hour is come when you must be in 
doors, how your poor sick heart dies away within you? 
"Oh mother !" — but we draw the curtain ; we dismiss 
the audience ; we disband the shadowy company of the 
actors of the Past. 



42 LEARNING TO SMOKE. 

And shall any man, even this Notary, with these confes^ 
sions on his Hps, essay a scolding of the lads who are 
even now undergoing these inevitable experiences? There 
is big Teddy McShaughnuessey who comes to school 
when he likes, and who not only can smoke without geti 
ting sick, but chews tobacco with a persistence and a free-j 
dom worthy of a nobler cause. Don't you know, my dea| 
Madam, that your tender little boy, with the dimple in* 
his chin and the sweet little mouth that you love to kiss 
so well, would give every marble he owns and throw his 
skates into the bargain, if he could only do those wicked 
things as well as Teddy ? Don't you know that your little 
Arthur Pendennis admires that big lout of a fellow with 
his dirty hands and imperfectly seated pantaloons and 
uncombed hair more than he admires Gustavus Adolphus 
or George Washington ? Remain in the blessedness of 
your ignorance, my dear Madam, and refuse if you will 
to believe your boy to be subject to such horrid depravi- 
ties and debasing tastes ; and if you revolt at the intru- 
sion of an offer to disabuse your confiding mind, not any 
words more shall be said to your annoyance. But — ; but 
what ? Shall not the Constant Reader be permitted to 
enjoy his own reflections and reach his own conclusions 
as he may ? Indeed and indeed he shall ; and enough is 
as good as a feast ! 



GREEN APPLES AND CARROTS. 43, 

Green Apples and Carrots.— Next to snow-balling and 
vading in that leather-penetrating mixture of snow, water 
id mud, known by the name of " slush," green apples 
bave the greatest fascination for boys. Also, for girls. 
Uso green gooseberries. Also carrots. But green apples 
[lave the first rank in the affections of boyhood. This is 
$0 general as to suggest the necessity of bringing boys 
and girls) within reach of those early and knurly fruits ; 
^hich premise being admitted, fetches us up against the 
bonsequent theorem that the stummerkake is as indis- 
^pensable an incident to a well regulated boyhood (and 
girlhood) as measles and the seven-year misfortune. 
Green gooseberries are more properly classified among 
the temptations of very tender childhood, ere yet the 
knowledge, so dear to the heart of all schoolboys (and 
girls), of the pleasant sin of stealing green apples has 
dawned upon the fallow and susceptible mind. Carrots, 
as they grow afield, waving their green and feathery tops 
in the summer sun, and all crisp and yellow to the touch 
and taste, are never a temptation when harvested. T/ien 
they become fodder. As they stand with their long slim 
roots in the soft earth they are a thing to be stolen, to be 
washed in the horse trough or wiped on a trouser-leg, and 
crunched, with only su:h teeth as a boy has to crunch 
with, by the roadside, or, furtively, in shaded corners un- 
der the friendly hiding of the farmer's fence. It takes a 
good deal of training in the mystery of French soups to 
teach the adult American the edibility of a carrot in any 
other shape or condition than the one we have hinted at. 



44 GREEN APPLES AND CARROTS. 

And even then the yellow disks are more a matter of form 
and ornamentation than of actual nutriment. But the apple 
is in danger from its natural enemy, the boy (or the girl), 
from the time of its attaining the size of a filbert until it 
is put in a barrel or converted into cider. Possibly, 
probably, indeed, this depraved taste for green apples is 
the self-assertion of The Old Adam in mankind's earliest 
estate. We are not informed by any explicitness of state- 
ment what kind of an apple it was that our gentle mother 
Eve plucked and gave to her spouse, much less are we 
told of the age and relative ripeness of the Ponium 
Adami. It being their first acquaintance with that fruit, 
it is not impossible that Eve may have plucked a green 
one ; and who knows but it was sour ? Certainly it was 
a seedling, or, at all events, the probabilities point in that 
direction ; for why should Adam have grafted a tree be- 
fore having made himself acquainted with the flavor of 
the fruit ? We suspect, when we come to reflect, how- 
ever, that it was a large yellow Pun'kin Sweet, and that it 
was too ripe and luscious to be resisted. Else, how 
could as tasteful and judicious a person as Gran'ma 
must have been, been tempted to forfeit Paradise by 
helping herself thereto ? 

Speaking of boys in the abstract, it is to be said in all 
truthfulness and candor that, next to a sure-enough watch 
and chain in importance and self-satisfaction to a boy, is 
his first black eye. There is something about its history 
and possession which rises above the humble level of 
warts and gum boils, and places it in near relationship to 



w 



r 



GREEN APPLES AND CARROTS. 45 



the distinguishing and all-absorbing eminence of a dislo- 
cated toe or a broken arm actually carried in a sling. 
There is a glory about it ; and its possessor has the right 
to take upon himself the airs and attitudes of the heroi- 
cals. He is as one who has returned with honorable 
scars from the perilous edge of battle. We have known 
a sporadic case of the rheumatics to confer something of 
this exacting honor of invalidity upon a deserving boy. 
But a black eye is of the legitimate laurels of renown. 
So, also, is an anchor, or a star of India lak, '^pricked 
in," not without pain, in the arm or hand. (This latter 
is a local honor, and smells of sea-weed.) A boy is no 
longer suspected of being girlish or milk-soppy, once he 
is thus adorned. It is the next best thing to a mus- 
tache. 

What makes a boy always slam a door ? Something 
in the peroration way may be annihilated by an untimely 
slam and an accompanying jump and thump and screech. 
Boys didn't used to be so bad when you and I were boys 
— did they, neighbor? When we went out-of-doors we 
held the latch with thoughtful gripe until the exit was 
fully made, and then the final closing was done with a 
charming gentleness. Then we (all of us) moved on 
towards our well-ordered amusements with a calm and 
steady pace ; and we never screeched ! There were never 
any dirty faces then, never any torn jackets, never any 
letters in the post office. No boy ever played hookey 
then, nor stole apples nor traded jack-knives. When 
boys wanted to go a swimming they used to get their 



46 WINDY. 

mothers to go along with them and show them how. No 
boy ever stole his father's pistol and swapped it off for a 
spavined sled or a sore eyed kitten then. All was good. 
We wish those times would come again. Suppose they 
would come again ; would you find yourself at middL 
age with that meagre bank account ? Would " Hall deal 
in hides and pious Jones be deaHng faro in Chicago?" 
Would this case of the cacoethes scribendi be observabL 
think you ? Ah ! who knows. There is a divinity dot 
shape our ends, rough hew them how we will ! Perhap: 
after all ; we are not such free moral agents as we som 
times like to be thought or as some moral and religion^ 
teachers tell us we are. 



.* 



Windy. — We confess to having contemplated an elabo 
late essay on wind ; but having mislaid the authoritiei 
from which we intended to have confiscated our learnec 
terms and scientifical conclusions we are compelled tc 
abandon the project as an effort in the owlish and instruc 
tive way. The fact that the minions of Boreas were 01 
the rampage night before last, tearing away sails anc 
standing rigging, blowing the mate's hair off and capsiz 
ing the cook into the lee scuppers, this fact we say justi 
fies such an essay as we thought of inflicting upon the 
readers of these N's. and Q's. But a disquisition, wind 
wards, like the gale itself, has a wide sweep. It refen 
to a great multitude of things, directly and indirectly. 



WINDY. 47 

There is the wind which, when properly blown, makes 
what is labelled oratory. That is a very famous wind,* and 
it has blown many a craft of small burden and meagre 
carrying capacity into the snug harbor of emoluments, 
notoriety and the honors which are so oftentimes '^easy." 
Then there is what crusty old Thomas Carlyle in his 
gruif way calls melodious wind, meaning the harmonious 
sounds given out by poets and musical folk. One might 
occupy no little space discanting upon this sort of wind 
and thereby engage himself in a very readable sort of 
composition. For example, that beautiful song of Al- 
drich's about the tangled skeins of rain ; there are the 
sweet sonnets of the Master, and there are Bryant's im- 
mortal (and everlasting) lines, beginning — 

" The melancholy days." 
But for the nine hundred and ninety thousandth time 
we forbear. (We shall probably find ourselves forbearing 
again and again as the season advances.) And speak- 
ing of wind, read our puffs, elsewhere elaborated with 
wild profusion and spontaneity of the breezy wind of 
commendation and endorsement. As to those who are 
blown about by every wind of doctrine. Heaven help 
them ! These are days when one's faith, if it have not 
sure anchorage in the safe harbor of well-grounded con- 
viction, will get blown from its moorings, drift into the 
mists and hazes of uncertainty and doubt, and be found- 
ered at last in the lashing waters of an unknown sea. 
Even this Querist, venturing as he has into this cyclone 
of vagabond fancies, find himself in danger of getting so 



I 



48 WINDY. 

far away upon the limitless ocean of vagary — where the 
Jabberwock burbles, we suspect — as to need, as the im- 
mortal Webster suggested, to seek advantage of the earliest 
lull in the storm and the first clearing away of the clouds, 
to take his bearings and determine his latitude and longi- 
tude. What a tempest of verbiage the letting loose of a 
breeze of idle words can breed, to be sure ! . If a man 
may know whence it cometh, he cannot tell, let him be 
ever so acute, whither it will go. Let us not play with the 
ungovernable lest it sweep us beyond the limits of cohe- 
rence. There is such a thing as sowing the wind, and 
reaping the whirlwind, even when the Dictionary is the 
quiet and unruffled source of such peril-freighted gales. 




r 



THE LITTLE MEN. 



1 




THE LITTLE MEN. 



/^NE thing is to be regretted as a result of the prevail- 
^^^ ing cold weather : The Fairies are not as abundant 
as they were while the weather w^as warmer. Even since 
December set in some of the Little Men have made their 
presence known out of doors. One in particular who 
lived near a spring had a wide acquaintance, and his 
voice was often heard in the gloaming lamenting the final 
closing for the Year of those large yellow flowers, which 
would be called Four o'Clocks, were they smaller and 
lived in another chme. We suppose the elf had had some 
tender revels under those expanding petals. A boy who 
has lately begun to wear long trowsers and who longs for 
a hip-pocket and a sure-enough pistol, thinks that this 
same man-fairy has come into the house and taken up 
his residence there ; but his mother (the boy's mother) 
says she is afraid it is a rat, or, perhaps a stray squirrel or 
chipmunk that has been seen haunting the premises and 
nibbling at the table crumbs about the kitchen door. 
And so the mother thinks it will be wise to sell old '* Abe," 
the house-dog (who hates cats), and get a cat to drive 
away the rats and mice — for the mice are very plentiful 
and very saucy. (One of the wee marauders was found 



52 THE LITTLE MEN. 

the other day building her nest in the pocket of papa's 
great coat in the hall, and helping herself to the pine-nuts 
and cracker crumbs therein.) But there is great and 
serious danger in getting a cat — or, rather, in driving off 
the suppositive mice and rats. For mightn't ihey be the 
Little Men? We all remember how once upon a time, a 
great many years ago in Wales, the Fairies were driven 
away forever from a certain farm-house ; how the Dame, 
being annoyed by the dirt which was constantly tumbling 
into the dishes on her table from overhead when she and 
her harvest-men were at dinner, adopted the plan which 
thus banished the Little Folk from her house. They 
were all seated at dinner, you remember, when the 
Brownies, frolicking among the bare rafters, tumbled 
down the dust in such quantities as that the whole meal 
was spoilt. This made the Dame very wroth indeed; and 
the next day, when an old woman came into the house 
and said she knew of a way to rid the place of the mis- 
chievous intruders, the Dame took her advice, which was 
thus : To invite the six harvest-men to dinner, and to 
boil all that was needed to serve them in an egg-shell. 
Well, she did this; and when the elves discovered that 
the dame had boiled a great dinner for no less than six 
stout men in the shell of an ^gg, they said to one another; 
*' We have lived on this earth before the acorns were 
planted, but we never saw so marvelous a thing as the 
dressing of a dinner for six harvest-men in an egg-shell 
before, and there must be some dreadful power under 
this roof which we had better respect by going away." 



I 



THE LITTLE MEN. 53 



And SO they went away and staid away, never, never 
going into that house again, though they did stay about 
among the cows and sheep, and were known to comb the 
beards of the goats on Saturday nights so that they might 
look tidy on Sunday. Now this was in Wales, to be sure ; 
but who can tell but there may have come over with the 
Llewellyns and the Catesbys and the Ap Joneses, some 
Welch fairies, and that some of them are even now frol- 
icking under yon roof-tree ? Everybody knows how these 
Little Folk are able and willing and constant to keep 
away all sorts of harm from those they love and care for. 
Then hadn't we better be careful about driving them 
away? Look at Cinderella, how they befriended her! 
We think it would be the better and safer way to not sell 
old Abe, the house-dog, but to keep him and let him 
scare off the cats which might, but for him, come to trouble 
the Brownies and frighten them away. At all events, 
children, we will not boil our dinner in an egg-shell for 
fear of what might happen then. 

Santa Claus is pretty poor this year, but he is very 
kind, nevertheless ; so that the little boys and girls (and 
some big ones too), who want to have the good saint bring 
them some nice new skates or some new boots with red 
tops to them, or pretty wax dolls or something very, very 
nice must be just as good as they can, and quit stoning 
Chinamen and playing hookey and blowing spit-balls and 
other projectiles at their teachers' noses. Also, the little 
boys who slyly slip a chaney or a toy pistol or some such 
trinket into their pockets when the man ain't looking. 



54 THE DOWNFALL OF THE BANDBOX. 



1 



they'd better look out or their stockings will go empty 
and never have as much in them as a papa's broken- 
bladed knife or a mamma's old, dry sugar heart, all fly- 
specked and left over from last year's dinner with the 
Squire — which, mind you, are to some poor little chaps a 
good deal better than nothing, bless their innocent little 
souls. 



The Downfall of the Bandbox. — Everybody who 
is old enough has had a youth. His never-recognized 
achievement is old age. But he must be along in 
the season of that mellowness which likes to be patri- 
archal to the young and assuring to the old by referring 
to the experiences of his salad days. '' We all dream 
in youth" says pathetic Dinah Mulock ; and oh, fellow- 
sinner, there goes Fighting Sam; there sits in her boun- 
tiful hair, sweet Alice ; there is sturdy Ben, who gave 
the boy who wanted to (and could) lick us, a dread- 
fully bloody nose ; there rises out of the mist the shade 
of the Nameless one ; there goes the ghost of the bully 
we licked of a steamy afternoon — spite of our fear of him 
growing out of the fact that his father was a circus-man 
and himself a sailor; there stands the blue-eyed, pallid, 
shapely youth who led the timorous, shrinking school of 
young gentlemen against the fellows from the Butchers' 
Pens; and here sit we, softened by the ^'thought of love,'' 
thinking of the day-time drive behind the stage driver, 
for the summer's visit in the country. It was such a 



THE DOWNFALL OF THE BANDBOX. 55 

blessed summer then ; such a fragrant spring, such a ten- 
der autumn ; such a tingUng and Hfesome winter ! ''Day 
and night, but it is wondrous strange ! " When the stage 
— not the flippant buggy nor the vulgar omnibus — but 
the Concord coach with its six in hand came up in front 
of the hollyhocks and the poppies — do you know, oh 
reader, that the smooth-shaved driver, his face aglow and 
his voice attuned to the greeting of the respectability of 
the womanhood he had known since his school days — 
do you know that in our young heart there sprang up a 
reverence for His Majesty — his tender, regal, beneficent 
kingship who sat in State upon the box there ? One's 
healthful boyhood loved him, nestled by the seat beside 
him, gloried in his cluck at the horses, accepted his con- 
descension, and with all his heart admired that stout and 
florid god? How the women in the taverns and the 
country postoflices and the mantua-makers' shops did 
smile at him; and oh the knowingness of the elder men, 
the horseboys and the postmasters ! But lurking under 
all these amiable traits there was a depravity which one's 
stout spinster aunt instinctively suspected and would not 
tolerate. That was the innate hatred of a stage-driver 
for a bonnet -box. She knew — all proper womankind 
always know — that the stout heel jammed through the 
cover and into the very sacredness of the bonnet — that 
this was not an accident, not a mere harmless mistake, 
not a fortuitous circumstance, but a malignant and vicious 
eff'ort — something seeded in the false heart of man's 
depravity and finding flower and expression through a 



56 THE DOWNFALL OF THE BANDBOX. 

most infamous and malignant smashing. We fear thii 
conclusion, feminine and illogical as it is, and unsus- 
tained by evidence, is correct ! Male youthfulness smiled 
upon these occurrences, and adolescence exulted in the 
catastrophe. Yesterday we saw a sight ! Shades of old 
whip stocks, under the shadows of woods and beside the 
watering-troughs of the stabling places, think of the 
scene ! Piled beside a clothing store, by the cord, as it 
were, there, with tha variegation of their multitudinous 
colors full upon them was, yesterday, a hecatomb of 
band-boxes. They were piled there like A Just Retribu- 
tion. There were blue ones and green ones and red, 
deserted, friendless, unclaimed, their bullying all gone 
from them, empty, slighted, mocked ! Nothing could 
be more pitiful ; nothing was ever more helpless ; noth- 
ing ever indicated more fully the fullness of the Day of 
Freedom : 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. 

The catastrophe of the episode and Era is made more 
emphatic in the fact that even little children, unawed 
and lightsome of heart, carted these fabrics away by all 
manner of toyish contrivances ; kicked them as they had 
been "plug" and discarded hats; hauled them about as 
conquerors whom they had first learned to fear, and then 
to hate and finally to mock and despise as the cruel ty- 
rants of their fond and tender lives. Is this the down- 
fall ? Is this the Proclamation of Emancipation ? Let 
us, hoping so. Praise God and take courage ! 



PUFFS. 57 

Puffs. — There is a pleasure in the writing of puffs which 
lust be foregone when one sits down to the less serious 
id sentimental task of composing the ponderous editorial, 
the exhaustive essay, the wide and windy advertisement, 
or the tell-tale poem. Your thorough-going puff is full 
of the real business of life — hke the game of politics or 
the prosecution of a war. The puff-writer, whose soul is 
in his art, feels the grateful viands descending his throat 
as he mentions the large and generous cheer of an hotel, 
or the lush abundance of an eating house ; his mind's 
eye sees the glitter of the gems his pen portrays, the while 
he writes of amethysts and pearls, and the lordly topaz, 
rubies and that imperial thing of things, the diamond; 
his heart glows amid the fancied fragrance of those floral 
wonders which make the milliner's window look like a 
garden ; his soul falls into something akin to revelry as 
his imagination wanders in wanton mood among the silks 
and laces and filmy things which lie upon the shelves and 
within the drawers of the dry goods man ; and there is a 
sturdy warmth in the mention of the grocer's bags and 
firkins ; a glow of heart, as at a winter evening's fire, is 
felt in and over him at the thought of the cheery bar, the 
snug parbr of the village inn, the well warmed shop of 
the apothecary, and eke the barber's chair ! Smell the 
fragrance of that Havana as we puff it —a grateful imag- 
ination ; let the sense of comfort grow and expand as 
the writer makes eloquent his thoughts of stout surtout 
and stouter shoe, of coat and vest, yea, and the trouser 
which graces his leg withal ! And not without some 



58 PUFFS. 

fond emotions doth the puffish man sit him down to pei^ 
the virtues of the butcher shop ; for there is a heart; 
companionship in the man of skewers and steel ; and whi 
shall fitly describe the gleeful glare of the smithy, and 
what hand, however deft, doth not hesitate upon th^ 
threshold of the candle-lighted cordwainery? Oh, vis 
ions of my youth ! How we have sat and wondered ad 
we listened at the tales told and mighty adventures re-j 
lated from that Bench — from which there is no appeal ! 
One hoped his own boyish shoe, then under repair al 
heel and toe, itself taking on its humble share of the in^ 
spiration of the scene,, might almost never be mended, sq 
sweet it was to linger there and drink to the dregs tha 
gentle romance of the hour ! There is an emphasis nc 
other man imparts when the cobbler, twitching the waxed-^ 
ends to the swift completion of each destined stitch, 
sends his bared elbows with vigorous jerk toward either 
listener, accompanying the action with the words of his 
argument or his tale of hair-breadth escapes by sea and 
land. It is not in your great factories, nor yet in your 
shops of many hands, where this glamour of romance is ; 
but only where the good shoemaker, with, perhaps, one 
silent apprentice, whose duty (and privilege) it is to lis- 
ten, beats the lapstone and drives the awl, lord of the 
scene and its works. Doth not the air smell of wax and 
wetted leather and become redolent with morocco as we 
write ? And shall this humble scene be so full of the 
reminiscence of youth, and the later and larger scenes 
of manhood and active life be written of, and not 



PUFFS. 



59 



suggest their thoughts ? Alas I and alas ! The inefface- 
able scenes of boyhood are our best and truest and most 
enduring memories, growing purer and dearer year by 
year, and at last, let us hojoe, being hallowed by the peace 
and serenity of age. 




r 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 



TTHE Constant Reader has noted, with mixed feelings 
of pleasant anticipation and alarm, some confessions 
of this Notary, or some hints rather, that he is big with 
the yet crude materials of a book. To be possessed of 
an idea involves the some time expression of an idea — 
or if not its expression, the hurtful results of suppression 
and repression, — like the drowning of one's young loves, 
the nipping of one's poetical fancies in the bud, or a pre- 
mature weaning from the maternal fount. It has been 
given out in these N's and Q's that their editor had been 
wrestling with the embryonate idea of a work on Toads, 
the same to be, in a subtile way, something satirical — a 
feeble reflection of the sort of thing drifted at in Carlyle's 
Sartor Resartus. Also, there have been other hints of 
bookish things in the essay line, fancies evolved from a 
contemplation of the near surroundings which enfold this 
Inquisitor ; something dimly hinting at men's habits and 
women's propensities ; a treatise on the frailties, foibles 
and framework of a possible human society, in fact. 
Now who knows what all this uneasiness of mind may 
not bring forth ? 



64 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 



If a spider may weave his curious structure out of his I 
own physical resources, why may not a professional scrib-j 
bier finally gather together of his scraps and sketches and] 
compound a mixture which shall not only have a flavor of 1 
its own. but find a place among things readable and liter- 1 
ary-like? Thackeray, the Master, wrote Vanity Fair and! 
styled it a Novel without a Hero. He left his fascinated 
readers to find out that it was a novel with a very em- ■ 
phatic heroine in the person of Becky Sharp. It is thefl 
best assortment of abstract gossip in the world. But 
mind the width of his field. He had all England, as seen 
through the million eyes of all London, to glean from. 
Now suppose that when these heterogeneous fancies and 
vague glimpses and hitherto unsystematized scraps and 
notions find themselves crystalizing, they should assume 
the odd colors and fantastic shapes of a Society Novel, 
with deep, dark hints, tortuous intrigues, far reaching 
matrimonial plans, neighborhood rivalries, family jealous- 
ies, scrambles for first places, aspirations toward social 
leadership, a record of successes and reverses, ups and 
downs, plans perfected and plans frustrated, skeletons in 
closets, etcetera, and so on, suppose this 'umble Annota- 
tor should evolve such a piece of composition-work as 
that, what would come of it? Would it *'take," we won- 
der ? Suppose such a work were issued bearing the title 
of The Inexorable Aunt, or the female Avuncular Rela- 
tive with the Napoleonic head and the Luciferean Ambi- 
tion ; would there be any uncharitable eyes ready to see 
a likeness to somebody in the very title ? Or suppose this 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 65 

yet unformed project were to assume the shape of The 
Man and his Destiny — the man being a wealthy heir and 
his Destiny being a keen, weasel-eyed young woman with 
a liking for his dollars and an appetite to handle the 
same — a faint reflection of Becky Sharp, in fact. As one 
followed the fortunes of this young man and saw him 
led on and on toward the social maelstrom which should 
fetch him up at length, would there be any observant 
faculties which should detect the objects portrayed and 
vow their knowledge of the ^* sitters." 

When Dickens limned his genre picture of The Cheery- 
ble Brothers he took his models from actual London life ; 
his Wilkin s Micawber is a caricature of his father, while 
he himself is David Copperfield. A real nobleman sat 
for Thackeray's Marquis of Steyne ; Disraeli took the 
Marquis of Bute for the lay figure of his Lothair ; and 
Charles Lever owns up that his Father Loftus, his Mickey 
Free and many of his other characters are drawn from 
life. Then why not this x\unt, this Man and his Destiny, 
or this What You Like — why might they not be the 
result of some crude sketching, some amateur portrayals, 
some utilizing of the raw materials which lie on one's 
every side? Let us imagine our little city the centering 
place of so much of social importance as naturally finds 
lodgment in a Capital town. It is quite in the ordinary 
order of things that this community should have its fac- 
tions and its heads of factions, its rivalries and its feuds, 
its prosperous ventures and its disastrous reverses. And 
it is not an unnatural conception or assumption that there 



i 



66 THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 

should be an acknowledged place of social pre-eminence 
in such a community dear to the female heart, besought \ 
on the female skirmish-line, striven for, longed for, now i 
won, now lost, now falling into queen-like hands, now 
sceptered by incompetency and offensiveness. Woven 
in and out among the warp and woof of this fabric might ] 
here and there be seen the colors of Iccal politics, the ' 
red stains of ambition, the green tints of jealousy, the j 
yellow gaudiness of ostentatious display, or the neutral i 
tints of guile, subtlety and craftiness. 

One's hero (if a hero and not a heroine were chosen to i 
be the color-bearer of his book,)might be deftly led through ; 
social mazes into the hopeless involvements of a political ! 
labyrinth ; or out of a successful canvass for political 
honors into the despair of domestic infelicity. And then 
the lesser dramatis personae — these might be made to 
assume many a picturesque attitude, picturesque and 
grotesque indeed. Who knows but this Novel might 
immortalize somebody by getting him into the most inex- 
tricable maze of resentful entanglements and malignant 
suspicions ever heard of? Now, we know a man (by sight) 
who would make a first-class villain. He may be the 
honestest man in the Great Basin, but his hair grows very 
black and very low down on his forehead ; his eyes look 
at you with a cold, steady, cruel glare from under black, 
bushy eyebrows ; there is an unnatural lump on his rear 
hind quarter which suggests a great big dragoon pistol 
(though it may be nothing more harmful than a meer- 
schaum pipe and a tobacco bag), and he lives on a street 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 67 

whereon are said to have been seen some midnight 
scoundrels of the amalgam-steahng sort ! We think we 
could make the blood of some susceptible people run up 
and down their spinal column in a very cold streak by 
following up the lead of this First Villain and serving 
him up with all the possible garnishments of melodra- 
matic fiendishness. And oh, the deep-drained dregs of 
depleting devilment deposited during the diurnal dispen- 
sations of a demoralized Senate and Assembly ! Fancy 
the florid fulminations and fiery flavorings of a festering 
lobby; follow through the temptations, vexations and 
twistifications of a Special Committee, braced and screwed 
together and stayed and counter-stayed in the interest of 
worldliness and sinful ambition, the possible hero, the 
Young Heir-at-Law, hinted at above ! What might one 
expect to see left of him, his virtue, his cleanliness, his 
purity, his wallet and his good clothes ? 

Oh ! but the materials are here my fellow-fabricators; are 
here just as the weeds and the houseflies are ; just as pas- 
sions and loves and hates are everywhere; just as there are 
little sins and big sins, holy aspirations and sordid aims, 
grandeur and meanness, splendor and squalor everywhere 
and always where men and women gather together and 
scheme and strive and push and struggle and live and die. 
Shall a mischief-maker come among us and set us by the 
ears; or shall our own Novel be carefully guarded so that 
it may not hurt where it should only amuse ; so it will 
entertain for a harmless hour, and not embitter for all 
future days ; so it shall emulate the gentle satirist and not 



68 THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 

copy after the cruel practices of the vivisector ? We shall 
see what the days may bring forth ; but this is not a pros- 
pectus nor yet a promise. We have the right of specula- 
tion in our own resources, and it is our affair if what we 
venture is lost. 

Later : — Does anybody any more believe what he 
reads in the newspapers. (The Morning Appeal is not 
a newspaper; it is the Breakfasteer's Companion). If 
anybody ever did believe what the newspapers said, how 
shall they, from this time henceforth continue to believe ? 
Look at the Pen and Scissors man of the Territorial 
Enterprise. He says without any sort of hesitation or 
equivocation that this Notary is going to write a novel ; 
and then he misappropriates one of our unguarded pa- 
rentheses and introduces it as an opening chapter. What 
ought to be done with a pensman and scissorist of that 
loose sort of construction ? To be sure this Querist 
'*" toyed in the amber moonlight " with the whimsey of 
a possible Society Novel one of these strange, breezy 
days, but he distinctly disavowed any prospectus or 
promise to that effect. If we could surprise this ro- 
mance-reading world with something in the way of a 
moral fiction there is no knowing but we might be 
tempted ; but for a man with a paste pot in one hand 
and a pair of shears in the other, to say that we are com- 
mitted to the fabrication of a real, full-rigged novel, is 
too much. At all events, if we do such a thing, old P. 
and S. shall be served up to the delectation of this wide- 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 69 

eyed world with all his mucilage upon him and the im- 
plement of his trade fastened immovably to his thumb 
and finger. Has anybody ever described a scissorizer in 
a novel, we wonder ? Why not show him to the reading 
public in his character of a journalistic Macbeth whose 
falchion is a pair of shears ; whose blasted heath is a 
wild wilderness of punctured exchanges ; whose secret 
black and midnight hags are the Devil himself, and who 
has deliberately and professionally ^^ murdered sleep/^ 
We see him at his stabbing work ! He sits alone. Upon 
his brow squats haggard care — haggard but green — a 
green shade, in fact, shading restless and relentless eyes. 
Mark the harsh ''swish " of his shears as they slash through 
the helpless paper of doomed exchanges. Mind the reck- 
less handling of that ominous paste brush. See him de- 
molish a pet sentence and immortalize a typographical 
error or a grammatical monstrosity. Oh ! but he is a 
demon, a tyrant, a doomsman and a fame-maker. It is 
he who may launch one's little shallop upon the tides and 
channels of journalism, never to cease sailing on and on 
into the shoreless ocean of newspaper life, as broad as 
Christendom, and as imperishable as the sea itself We 
think we will dot him down for a place, this man who 
makes and mars men's fame and fortune, and who slashes 
where he will and pastes where his own sweet fancy leads 
him. 

Apropos of the implied subject of bibliomania, it may 
be said that no man can be wholly bad who likes to accu- 
mulate old books and magazines, and to attack old news- 



yo THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 

papers, scissors in hand, for their bits of poetry, their 
short stories and their other materials for the filling of 
scrap-books. We know the ofttimes tiresome folly of a I 
diary (and who has not kept one at one time or another ?) 
but a scrap-book is a very different thing. To be a real 
scrap-book it must contain a little of everything and be 
hotch-potch. Regularity and system and smug order,! 
these bring ruin to the thing attempted. It is the fun of ' 
pouncing upon a sweet little bit of verse or a pleasant an- 
ecdote, close beside an abstract of a will or a solemn ser- 
mon that makes the pleasure and spiciness of your true 
repository of literary odds and ends. And speaking of 
old books, books that one Hkes to pick up at any time to 
read for the hundredth time some favorite passage, let 
this Notary try and describe one sensation awakened by 
the reading of some things. We will say that we read 
Count Robert of Paris, or the Fair Maid of Perth some- 
time when, being a temporary invalid, we had some fresh 
fragrant oranges given to us. We can never open the 
leaves of those charming novels without seeming to 
breathe the odor of those rich, aromatic fruits just as they 
smelled at that particular time when we were housed in a 
sick room. Barnaby Rudge, in the chapters where the 
Maypole Tavern and its cronies are described always 
brings up the taste of roasted chestnuts, and David Cop- 
perfield revives a long forgotten song — something about 
The Knight who looked down from his Paynim-Tower. 
Lamb's essays invariably remind us of Julia Dean, before 
she was Mrs. Hayne, and Poe brings up with great rivid- 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 7 1 

ness a certain carpet, and a coal fire in a peculiar sort of 
stove. There are bits of poetry and prose which are ab- 
solutely certain to conjure up pleasant scenes, long gone 
by ; and a glimpse at the zig-zag gilt on a certain old 
Bible-cover sets us to thrilling with the enjoyments of 
moonlight skating parties which are mellowed into dim 
and misty pictures, beautifully pure of tone and color, at- 
mosphere and sentiment. Robinson Crusoe always smells 
of toasted cheese, and Sandford and Merton revives recol- 
lections of a garret whose dusty treasures were a romance 
to some boys we once knew. Now this is an argument 
in favor of reading the best books amid the pleasantest 
surroundings. Their associations are as vivid as the asso- 
ciations attaching to men and scenes, epochs and iiwpres- 
sive experiences. Think of your first sight of a sure 
enough play, at the Theatre. You would'nt part with the 
entrancing picture it brings up for all the dramaticals of 
this age of advancement. As to circuses, no well-regu- 
lated person of any condition ever associated the going to 
them with any but his very earliest remembrance, and 
always in connection with perspiration, clean clothes and 
barley candy. So, my boys (big and Httle), read to your 
fill, the best books you can find — the best story books, we 
mean, real stirring romances which awaken all one's young 
heroism and make him wish that he could only have a fair 
chance with a good long sharp sword to finish the villains 
and the black-hearted murderers and kidnappers who are 
plaguing the priceless object of our solicitude and burn- 
ing affection. Read such books as these, and be sure and 



72 THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 

read them amid such surroundings and at such a time 
and under such circumstances as will be always pleasant 
to be reminded of. 

THE PATHFINDER. 

Lately we have read of some misfortunes that have 
come upon John C. Fremont in his old age. We think 
he ought to be comfortably pensioned, as Britain pensions 
her deserving men. His name comes up for opportune 
mention here because of some verses he once wrote. He 
was the Pathfinder, right glorious in his day. He was the 
first man to make known in authentic, authorized form, 
the story of the Great Plains. Before his time the vast 
stretch of land lying between the Sierra Nevada and the 
Rocky Mountains was as little known to the reading world 
as the interior of Africa. When he had crossed his old 
trails in the Pacific Railway cars, he wrote the lines we 
have alluded to. They are entitled The Wanderer. We 
reproduce the first and the last two of these stanzas, let- 
ting them relate themselves to these speculations of ours 
as they may : 

*' Long years ago I wandered here, 
In the mid-summer of the year, 

Life's summer too ; 
A score of horsemen here we I'ode, 
The mountam world its glories showed, 
All fair to view. 

Backward amid the twilight glow 
Some lingering spots yet brightly show 
On hard roads won 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC. 



73 



Where some tall peaks still mark the way 
Tracked by the light of parting day 
And memory's sun. 

But here thick clouds the mountains hide, 
The dim horizon bleak and wide, 

No pathway shows, 
And rising gusts and darkening sky. 
Tell of "the night that cometh " nigh 

The brief day's close." 



I 




I 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 



k 



I 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 

/^AP'N BOB and his wife and baby honored the Morn- 
ing Appeal office with a visit yesterday forenoon. 
The Cap'n is a man of good stature — say five feet nine 
or ten, and, as near as one might guess (for an Indian's 
beardless face is always a guess), he is rising forty, in 
years. (If a white man had his wrinkles and sub-wrink- 
les, we should gauge him up in the fifties.) Mrs. Bob is 
of medium size, well browned, chubby, matronlike, an 
unpretentious and domestical woman of somewhat near 
thirty, and like Mrs. Hayes, wears her hair so as to cover 
her ears. The baby is still in arms, but is of a singularly 
polite and good-natured sort. Altogether the trio showed 
for something quite assuring in regard of the respectabil- 
ity of the Piute family. Cap'n Bob came in to say that 
the Indian Pow Wow would last for five nights longer. 
We and he counted the nights, as per calendar, and it 
was, as we discovered, a still undecided point whether 
the festivities should close on or before next Tuesday 
evening. At all events, we discover that the Cap'n had 
mixed up his conclusions along with a very serious 
thought of circus going and seeing the elephant. Also 



78 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 



his mind seemed to dwell on Dan De Quille — which 
seems natural like, for Dan is known far and wide for his 
aboriginal structure and desirable qualities. ^^You and 
Cap'n Joe of the Washoes, good friends," we hinted. 
"Oh yes, good friends," replied Bob. In some of his 
more ambitious flights we thought we detected some- 
thing of an involved and not entirely lucid manner of 
delivery. This was especially observable when Bob's 
face assumed a supernatural expression of nonchalance 
and matter-of-course-ness — as if his English was of the 
fluent and spontaneous sort. At those times he has a 
fashion of closing his eyes and elevating his chin and 
looking unnaturally profound. We have noted some- 
thing of this superhuman look of wisdom on paler faces, 
when their owners ventured out of their depth into a 
wild sea of words and ideas, fathomless and shoreless, as 
it w^ere. But when the Cap'n let his own genial nature 
shine through his honest face his smile was really charm- 
ing, so frank and unaffected was his manner. We in- 
quired after Naches, and Bob said he was on his Hum- 
boldt farm. Winnemucca, he said, was "up North." 
Wouldn't they let him and his braves into the circus free? 
we asked. "Yes, in Virginia City," he answered; and 
then, as if having found the right trail, he let it be know^n 
that he was away from home and accustomed w^alks; and 
the hint was taken and the red man went away with the 
white man's small, subsidiary tribute in his pocket, fac- 
ing toward the doling places of cold victuals and a drop 
of hot coffee. Deprecates whiskey, does honest Bob, 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 79 

and says his fellow Piutes have steered clear of fire-water, 
since their coming to the Pow-Wow. 

There was no little sparking going on yesterday be- 
tween the Piute lads and lassies. We noted one pair 
who seemed very fond, in a shy way, and very decorous, 
withal. An awning post was their trysting place and 
mutual friend. They took turns — she in a coquettish, he 
in an insinuating and, to her, not unwelcome way. A 
right, bright, clean, buxom maiden she was, to be sure ; 
and one could see that she was proud of her lover, as 
well she might be ; for he was lithe and clean of make 
and carriage, a full twenty to her seventeen, one might 
guess^and altogether a very comely pair. We suspect 
there be many of these love-makings at this juncture in 
the Piute history. Of course, the Fandango is the cause 
of this centering here of so many of this tribe of Indians. 
There was beside these sparkish phenomena a genial 
disposition to be neighborlike and accommodating and 
to share and share alike observable among the young 
men of the tribe. This was illustrated by the use and 
employment of two ponies to three riders — one riding 
singly, and two youthful braves taking deck passage on 
the other pony. Behind them both toddled the wee'est 
mite of a colt we ever saw. It looked like a toy, but it 
stepped ahead, horselike and peert, and evidently was 
alive to the emergencies of the occasion. Indeed, this 
very small young beast seemed to feel no little pride in 
contemplation of the fact that its mother was able, so 
soon after her confinement, to carry that brace of sedate 



8o PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS, 

young warriors. This colt was the nearest approach to 
a weapon observable in the possession of these braves — 
and he was unmistakably of the single-barrel variety. 
Arma vu^icmqiLe cano I 

A milhner's dummy may be not a little seductive and 
Siren-like. As for instance : There is a neatly made 
calico dress mounted on one of those wire forms so con- 
venient for illustrating the female shape, standing in 
front of the door of a dressmaker whose modest local 
habitation is in RinckeFs Building, round the corner. 
It is very lifelike, is this feminine counterfeit. Its ordi- 
nary posture (albeit the body is minus a head), is calcu- 
lated to deceive the unwary observer; but last evening, 
just before the gloaming, its appearance of vivacity was 
much hightened by the aidful playfulness of the passing 
breeze. It seems that the arms of the dress are left 
hanging loose ; and when the light wind passed that way 
it lifted them so much after the female fashion that this 
unsuspecting scribe (who trusts that his native gallantry 
is undiminished with his accumulating years), found him- 
self obeying what he took to be a very decided, not to 
say vehement, beckon. He saw visions of — but it is a 
needless profanation of the finer feelings to say what his 
visions were. It is but just to himself to say, however, 
that his intentions were altogether proper and honorable. 

The laziness of dog-days is upon all animate nature ; 
and it is half unconsciously, and in an automatic way 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 8l 

that the eye of the most observant takes note of the 
pictures which are caught upon its tell-tale retina. 
The other senses, notably the nose, take cognizance of 
things unusual or offensive — as a smudge of old rags and 
packing straw and waste paper, for example. How the 
pyroligneous smoke penetrates the nasal organ, shrinking 
up the lachrymose ducts and setting the eyes to weeping 
the involuntary tears of affliction ! Thus are our feelings 
smoked out of us, as it were, and we seem comfortless 
it the midst of a speechless woe when in fact it is of the 
nose, nosey, and what seems a heart-breaking sorrow is 
merely a tingling sensation in the nostrils, and our audi- 
ble complaining is proof of our yet continued power of 
speech. 

A Constant Reader suggests that the Querist do jus- 
tice to the unfortunate who have not been to the Lake, 
this season. We suppose that there are not less than 
three or four thousand people who have visited and will 
visit the Lake this year. Now, there are not less than 
1,424,000,000 people on this earth of ours. Any arith- 
metician of ordinary dimensions can make out from the 
figures presented (taking our estimate of the number of 
Lake visitors) just how many of the peoples of this ter- 
restrial globe will not visit that attractive sheet of water 
during this season. Doubtless all the 796,000,000 people 
of Asia and the 313,000,000 natives of Europe and the 
197,000,000 residents of Africa and the rest of mankind 
would visit Lake Bigler or Tar-hoe, if they could ; but it is 



82 PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 

quite evident that they cannot. We are sorry for their 
deprivations, but we are conscious of a short allowance 
of commiseration to go round, and so we do not attempt 
the Herculean task of being sorry enough to satisfy any 
considerable number of these pitiable masses and mil- 
lions of Lakeless humanity. To be sympathetic with 
those who are immediately about us is to do injustice to 
the weeping multitudes at the antipodes, and we must be 
just, even as a fair and impartial barber is just and tell 
each to await his turn and not to be impatient or greedy. 
The Lake will keep. Von Schmidt will be forgotten dust 
while yet these limpid waters continue to reflect the sky 
and the grim mountain sides and the trees and the ever- 
lasting cUffs and the stars and the moon and the rising 
and the setting sun. So, do not bewail your fate too loudly 
dear readers of the Morning Appeal, but reflecting upon 
the hundreds of millions of humanity that share your mis- 
fortune, wrap about you the grief-proof cloak of self-assur- 
ance and stay patiently where you are and sweat it out ! 
Indeed, some men have died happy without ever having 
seen The Lake at all ; but that was in the age of iron when 
men enjoyed suffering, just as modern martyrs enjoy horse- 
back exercise, ten-pins, tramps, a la Weston, velociped- 
ings and base-ball. 

We must confess we like the sound of the blowing of 
the Fallish wind. There is a wearisome prolonging of 
the heated term. The sun burns as only it burns here 
in the arid time of a procrastinating August lingering on 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. S^ 

the back of September. When the branches and leaves 
of trees are stirred by these fresh breezes, and the early 
coming sundown and the quickly succeeding cool air of 
evening comes, one thinks, not unpleasantly, of the nut- 
ting season of the merry days of another time— no matter 
how far or near. But then and there the maple leaves 
and the foilage of the oak, the ash and the beeches and 
birches were dyed such reds and yellows, such scarlets 
and purples, such rich browns and warm siennas, as that, 
contrasted with the vivid greens of later verdure, made a 
wealth of color on the wooded hillsides that added a tone 
to the romance of the enterprise and put an emphasis 
upon the season such as we may not feel under this 
scorching sun and amidst this not always beautiful land- 
scape. But Nature asserts her compensations. No New 
England forest of many-hued autumnal tints ever leaned 
against the mellow evening sky with more magnificence 
of hue than the far-stretching Pine Nut hills as they glow, 
red as a rose in the gloaming. We have seen those 
peaks when in the light they were as pronounced a rose 
tint as ever was any cloud ; and the sharply-defined shad- 
ows cast by crest upon crest or down into the great clefts 
and ravines were as purple as the velvet leaves of the pansy 
or the cheek of a ripe damson. There are beauties in 
the evening landscape, as one looks to the southward, 
which are as full-freighted with pure ultramarines and 
lakes as any Italian scene ever looked upon. As the 
autumn grows older, as the air becomes more heavily 
freighted with smoke and dust, these colors will grow 
richer and stronger. And the year is in its days of de- 



84 PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 

cline. But a fortnight and the equinox will be upon us. 
Here and there a sprinkle of gray hairs ; now and then an 
observable increase in the depth and abundance of the 
crows' feet ; a further and dimmer look through the vista 
which leads back to those nutting-days under the walnuts 
and the beech-trees and amid the hazel thickets — these 
tell a tale of the coming of another autumn than that 
whose approach is heralded by the breezes of the after- 
noon and the sharp and eager air of early night. One 
day, Longfellow, recollecting something of the pleasant 
days when he strolled into the mast-laden woods near by 
his native city, wrote some pleasant lines. There are some 
of the habitual readers of these idlings who will recollect 
his poem entitled ^^ My Lost Youth.'' These two follow- 
ing verses help to remind those who are familiar with 
the scene of this sweet little poem, of the " Tender grace 
of a day that is dead ;" 

" I can see the breezy dome of groves, 

The shadows of Deering's Woods, 
And the friendships old and the early loves 
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves 

In quiet neighborhoods. 
And the verse of that sweet song, 
It flutters and murmurs still : 
*A boy's will is the wind's will. 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. ' 



And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair. 

And with joy that is almost pain, 
My heart goes back to wander there. 



PIUTES, MILLINERS AND BOYS. 85 

And among the dreams of the days that were, 

I find my lost youth again. 
And the strange and beautiful song — 
The woods are repeating it still : 
'A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. ' " 




SOMEWHAT OWLISH. 




SOMEWHAT OWLISH. 

TDOSSIBLY the vague pursuit of the more pleasing 
frills and ruffling of science is better adapted to what 
William Winter calls the pensive mind than the more 
exact elaboration of that vast, voluminous study. Cer- 
tainly that phase or part or function of the mind which 
enjoys the playful and the less abtruse things and thoughts, 
and still loves Nature and has too much respect for Poetry 
to attempt to weave its gentle undulations into form, 
should have its way, unvexed by the more rigid and 
inelastic terms which science has found, fixed and adopted 
as its common tongue. Why should a laughing yonker 
with his face tattooed with the mud of his mamma's 
flower garden and his knees daring the heat of the midday 
sun, why should he, when he catches a butterfly in his 
rimless hat, stop to call it a Lepidoptera ? Why should 
you and I, dear reader, restrained by the fear of an im- 
perfect attitude to science, call a wasp a vespa and a com- 
mon wasp a vespa vulgaris ? Let us not be frightened out 
of our honest, unvarnished Saxon. This Annotator has 
lately formed the acquaintance of a brace of hermit wasps, 
Yellow-jacketus stingorioiLs. He has observed with great 
curiosity the working of this pair of insects. First they 



90 SOMEWHAT OWLISH. 

prospect about for the necessary assessments to begin tl 
construction of their hoisting works. Having found th 
they begin their developments. But the demand seems I 
incessant, when once the work is begun, and The Yellow 
Jacket assesses his resources, his surroundings and him- 
self for ^' more mud " with a most persistent and extor- 
tionate frequency. He (or she, as the case may be) hav- 
ing found the capital wherewith to start housekeeping, 
constructs from the most convenient ceiling a pendant 
sphere, about as big as a one-third grown greening apple 
— something bigger than a strawberry and something less 
than a pumpkin. Having hitched his small domicile (in 
its upside-downish way), he next proceeds to construct a 
sort of canopy or umbrella-like affair — -what a tent maker 
would call a " fly " — over it. By and by, when this queer 
delicate fabric is done, he fashions a little comb inside of 
it ; and then either he (if he is a he), or she (which seems 
most likely) goes into the pouty-like little aperture at the 
bottom and lays a certain modicum of eggs, and prepares 
for future wasps, and looks out for generations of yellow- 
jackets yet unborn. But the queer part of it all is that 
while one yellow-jacket makes his umbrella first and his 
nest next, another, right along side of him will make his 
nest first and its covering next. Also, one will have his 
nest a variegated succession of dark and light gray stripes, 
while his next door neighbor, more plainly minded, will 
build his a somber tint throughout. Their construction 
is very rapid and beautifully skilled. The texture of the 
little house is that of the most delicate paper-like sub- 



SOMEWHAT OWLISH. 9 1 

Stance. There is a deft moistening of the little mould- 
ing hands during the operation of construction ; and it 
looks as if he were making himself ready for a vigorous 
fisticuff. If we had a mine and it had never been named, 
and we wanted to intimate that it was being worked with 
the best possible economy, we would call it " The Yellow 
Jacket." But there is another worker whose employment 
and utilization of the best availabilities to be reached is 
not to be overlooked. He is the man who makes flower- 
pots out of the wicker-work of old demijohns. Up town 
yonder, George F. has a place where he sells liquids of 
the malted and vinous sorts — and here and there a drop 
of spirits, we dare say. Well, along the line of his porch 
which agreeably faces the South, he has a great number 
of what the ladies call hanging baskets. Here is a sprig 
of ivy. It leaps and twines and twists up out of a shov- 
el-full of loam which is held in the inverted neck of an 
old carboy cover. Next to it is a fish geranium growing 
with surprising vigor out of the bottom of such a basket 
as this — a disrupted old brandy jar. And so along the 
line of that cheerful porch, for many yards. It is lovely 
— lovely, just as it is lovely to see birds building their 
nests in an old bomb-shell or an abandoned siege-mortar. 
Here, then, is John Barleycorn subdued and humanized 
and made to do duty in the way of adornment and beauty 
where, in other days and directions, he had done little 
but destroyed that which is beautiful and tender and 
attractive. The vines seem to grow with a vigor and 
a gleefulness which betokens innocence and no taint of 



92 SCARE-CROWS AND OTHER PRETENCES. 

guile. With an almost pardonable perversity, even a 
sweet potato vine, under such circumstances, might be 
justified in producing a crop of wine-yielding grapes ! 



ScARE-CROWs AND Other Pretences. — A young 
man who will be larger when he grows, pointed out to 
his papa the other day a very funny scare-crow. It 
stands in a little corn-patch in the lane toward Gar- 
diner's. The same is crucified. That is to say, it is a 
coat fitted on a cross, the lateral pieces serving for 
arms and the top for the head ; on this head was the 
traditional plug hat. The coat was buttoned, with great, 
almost too great precision across the breast, as if to con- 
ceal the fact of shirt-lessness, and the hat had a rakish 
set, as if he, the Great North American Scare-Crow, were 
in his cups. How people do run in grooves ! Here's a 
garden-patch of say one-eighth of a sub-divided one-half 
of an acre, running to a gore, and never a crow once in 
six months within flying distance of that little wee handful 
of a cornfield. And yet Mr. garden man he must take a 
coat that would cut up into a whole suit for young tow- 
head and make him as proud as a prize pig at a cattle 
show, and make a scare-crow of it. In the first place, 
the coat is worth more than all the corn ; in the next 
place, there are no crows to scare, and in the last place, 
that figure might excite a crow's derision, but certainly 
not his fear. But people wall stick to old notions ; and 



p 



SCARE-CROWS AND OTHER PRETENCES. 93 



it is just as impossible to dissociate corn from crows and 
both from an effigy among the growing maize as it is to di- 
vorce strawberries from cream or apple-jack from honey. 
One of the youngsters declared that that scare-crow was 
something more than just wood and old clothes and a 
battered hat ; and his eyes opened wide and he looked 
very serious, and we have no doubt he thinks there is 
something ghostlike, and bugabooish about it, after dark. 
It does have a very mysterious, overwrought, glum-glum- 
ish look about it ! 

About these times the good Sabbath School boy who 
refrains from running about the streets during the Lord's 
Day gets an apple-box and a stick and a string and some 
wheat and goes out in his mother's kitchen yard and 
there sets a snare for the chickens. When, after many 
ineffectual attemps to spring his trap so as to catch a 
chicken, one does get under, he hauls away at his string, 
not observing in his mad excitement, that the old yellow 
hen's neck is just under the edge of the box. After that 
unlucky fowl (which had died from the dislocation of her 
cervical vertebrae, consequent upon the mishap above 
mentioned) had been buried, a couple of days, and the 
dog had dug her up and hauled her mutilated remains 
into the dining-room, Mater-familias begins to remember 
that she hasn't seen the old hen for a day or two, and now 
how could it have happened that she met her untimely 
doom? Does Bartholemew speak up like a little man, 
and say he did it with his box trap? No, he turns a trifle 
green about the mouth and ears and joins silently in his 



94 ONE WORD ABOUT HANK MONK. 

mother's wonder. The httle Susan Anthony, what does 
she say? Does she not look with her large blue eyes 
into her dear parent's face and confess the truth ? No, 
she catches the contagion from her brother, and thinks it 
must have been Flora, a neighbor's mother-dog. Then 
up speaks truthful Ichabod, who has just come in with 
his new shirt in a state of hopeless contamination with 
the soil and one stocking lost past redemption, and lets 
the cat out of the bag ! Oh ! there was joy in that house- 
hold — but it was long after the sound of the descending 
maternal palm had ceased to be heard and after the ting- 
ling of little bodies had been assuaged. 



One Word about Hank Monk. — Hank Monk still 
survives. Also, he has an eye for your o'er inquisitive 
Eastern tourist. The other day Hank had a load of 
'em — mostly spectacled and all eager for the wonder- 
fuls. With him on the outside sat Arabella Mayflower 
W'inthrop Gookin from Marblehead. *'What sort of 
berries are those?" queried the spinster, pointing to 
some alder bushes on the bank of Clear Creek. 
'' Them's blackberries " says Hank, with his face fit for 
prayers. ^^Why, Oliver Walcott Gookin" she cried out 
to her brother, who sat inside the stage with the rest of 
the party, " do look at those blackberry trees," and he 
looked, and looking, fired the curiosity of Mrs. Gookin 
and Ezekiel Gookin, who is fitting for the ministry, and 



ONE WORD ABOUT HANK MONK. 95 

Zedediah Gookin, who has determined to be a missionary, 
and Harriet Amelia Harvard Gookin, who will w^eave her 
lathy form into the affections of the ologies, if her gold- 
bowed eyeglasses do not fail her, and of Mrs. Gookin's 
sister, Doctor Sarah Bunyan Hussey of South Danvers ; 
and they all exclaimed with one voice, ^' Oh, haow wonder- 
ful !" Then the spinster suggested to Hank that "mebbe 
he had better stop while she picked some of those black- 
berries." ^'No," says Hank, "they ain't ripe yet, and 
they are pisen when they are green." And then Miss 
Gookin communicated the fact to her brother, and he 
took it in and handed it round to his sister and his prom- 
ising sons and his wife, wdth the iron-grey corkscrew curls, 
and they each and all hauled out a note book about as big 
as a hotel register and dotted it down. Meantime Monk„ 
who is a bachelor, was as sweet as a pie on the dear old 
girl and set her heart to palpitating as it hadn't done 
before these forty years when he squeezed her hand as 
he lifted her down from the box at Glenbrook Landing. 
But they do like stuffing, these knowledge-seeking pedan- 
ticals, and every well-constructed stage-driver and brakes- 
man enjoys letting 'em have it. 

We heard some profanity yesterday caused by the 
weather — the heated term. Also we heard some des- 
pairing expressions from some ladies and others who 
are denied the blessed boon of a good square swear. 
These sufferers, living in comparative health as they do, 
illustrate that it is possible for humanity to survive even 
without the stimulating effects of a well-delivered volley 
of red-hot oaths. 



96 DENVER, ''the PILGRIM." 

''Denver," the Pilgrim. — Having once again trudged 
across the continent, our friend of a better day, Mr. Haz- 
lett, The Pilgrim, paid the Morning Appeal office a 
visit yesterday. He has held his own and toughened 
with years, has The Pilgrim, albeit there are signs of his 
true inwardness apparent in the rubicundicity of his nose, 
the fixedness of his expression of indifference to locality, 
and the general cut of his jib. We noted, with some- 
thing like admiration, as he stood looking at the office 
boy's unencDuraging back and toying with his whisker, 
that his hand seemed, like Cleopatra's form, " flexile and 
fair." It was a cleaner and more aristocratic hand than 
that of your common, hardened tramp ; and it showed 
blood, as of the Gordons or the DeNevilles. Indeed, 
Hazlett is as high a name as anybody need to carry 
about among his frowsy hairs and among his scanty ha- 
biliments, as he trudges and " beats " his way. Of the 
high nobility of letters stands Wilham of that name. But, 
as with other men who have matured in their business, 
Hazlett has hardened. There is little of the fresh joy of 
early manhood upon him, nor yet of the jocund mirth 
and keen observance of wholesome virility. He is a 
hard case, is The Pilgrim. Even his old pretense is gone 
—all gone, and left him brazen and stolid. We found 
him trying to force a conversation with the foreman. It 
was up-hill work. Then he tackled the head of the firm, 
who was busy "throwing in." The conversation was not 
profitable. He came round and shook hands with his 
old friend, the editor. With all his hardness of forehead, 



f 



DENVER, "THE PILGRIM. 97 

The Pilgrim has not forgotten his duties to the editorial 
person. He doffed his sorry hat. He cleared his husky 
voice. He was too honest, consistent and considerate to 
indulge in any palaver, any vain and frivolous prelimina- 
ries. He out with it. He wanted the price of a meal. 
We sujgested an order on a restaurant, and began to 
write one — for a four-bit meal. Two bits in money, he 
interposed, would do quite as well. But we stuck to the 
truth — that we were dead broke — and wrote him the 
order for a square dinner. He didn't thank us. He 
knew that we knew he was not in the least bit thankful. 
On the contrary, he was scornful and rebellious. He 
wanted the price of a drink (and so help us Bob, if 
we'd had it, he shouldn't have gone off without it) ; but 
he failed to fetch it, and so went away disappointed and 
angry. We wish him better luck next time. 

All printers know Hazlett. Some ten years ago or more, 
he took upon himself his character of tramp. We believe 
he has walked from the Missouri to the Sacramento and 
back at least a half-dozen times ; and his invasions of 
Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Arizona have been frequent. 
Time was when he would earn a paltry " stake," distrib- 
uting their type for the printers upon whom he laid trib- 
ute; and sometimes he would '' sub," briefly, for the more 
charitable fellows of the composing room ; but he has 
gone degenerate, of late, as hinted in the foregoing ; and 
having learned the ways of the outcast and the vagabond, 
has quite forsaken the art preservative, and, from a too 
frequent return to the places which have known him, has 
worn his welcome out. 



GLEANINGS. 



? 



t 



I 



GLEANINGS. 

^^7 HAT a wide suggestiveness in a name! Once we 
had the presumption to keep a standing head-Hne 
of Notes and Queries. Noblesse, oblige^ and so long as 
that heading was left standing the writer who had 
adopted it felt constrained to honor the demand it 
seemed to make upon his time and capacities. Indeed, 
it compelled a daily task whose accomplishing was a 
pleasant triumph, such as it w^as, but whose performing 
took more of leisure than can always be commanded. 
So, when a gap was made by a temporary disability which 
could not well be got over even with the help of an 
amanuensis, the exacting title line w^as dropped, never, 
perhaps, to be renewed. (In the face of possible activi- 
ties and professional complications it will not do to prom- 
ise too much ; w^e might fail of performance.) So we 
prefer the greater liberty which attaches to a more eclec- 
tic and less prescriptive form, and in exercising that pref- 
erence, choose our top-heads for the whim and duty of 
the present work or play. And so we have ^Hjleanings." 
As we intimate in the outset, this name is a suggestive 
one. Above any else it suggests sweet Ruth in the fields 
of the tender and manful Boaz. The pleasant little love 



I02 GLEANINGS. 

Story of four brief chapters tells us how Ruth and 
Naomi, her mother-in-law (for Ruth was a widow), 
" came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest," 
and how the young woman '' gleaned in the field after the 
reapers," and how " her hap was to light on a part of the 
field belonging unto Boaz." Says gentle Tom Hood : 

She stood breast high amid the corn, 
Clasped by the golden light of morn, 
Like the sweetheart of the sun. 
Whom many a glowing kiss had won. 

T7 * Tf * * 

Sure I said. Heaven did not mean 
Where I reap thou shoulds't but glean ; 
Lay thy sheaf adown and come, 
Share my harvest and my home. 

And this is what comes of appropriating '' Gleanings " 
for a name. Also this, which one finds anew by reading 
the Book of Ruth : Boaz having bargained with a kins- 
man of Naomi's for a parcel of land belonging to her and 
Ruth, there occurred the need of binding the bargain, 
therefore we are told : 

Now, this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning re- 
deeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things a man 
plucked off his shoe and gave it to his neighbor; and this was a tes- 
timonial in Israel. 

Hence, we reckon, we get the expression of so much 
'^to boot'' when one receives something over and above 
the mere terms of his bargain I Whv not ? 



TOADS AND TOADIES. I03 

Toads and Toadies. — When this Commentator 
writes his Book on the subject hinted at the other day, 
namely the apparent disposition of the Common Toad 
to go to the Bad (as evinced by his propensity to be seen 
furtively skulking about at all hours of the night), he will 
endeavor to convey to the whole toad family his ideas of 
the impolicy on the part of the elders of setting such 
an example, and the injurious practice of pursuing the 
habit by the young. We have no doubt that the Toad 
thinks he knows more about his business and his means of 
obtaining the necessaries of life than we, his Mentor, pos- 
sibly can know ; but that is only a Toad's opinion, and not 
anything of more consequence. The false ethics of the 
Toad's small philosophy are like unto the mistaken policy 
of such of the feathered tribe as act upon the axiom that 
the Early Bird catches the Worm. As has been shown by 
many analytical writers this apothegm states too much. 
Josh Billings covers the case for the prosecution when he 
quietly remarks, with warning voice, that the early worm 
often gets caught by the bird. And so, Mr. Toad, let 
the warning reach your dull, cold ears in time. You 
may be on the direct path of many beetle-bugs and 
night-crawling worms, and self-conceited, o'er venture- 
some moths ; but mind your eye, Sir ! and look out for 
the owls and the night-hawks 1 Indeed, deep down un- 
der a philosophy which not only goes beyond the mental 
machinery of toads and lesser reptiles, is the suggestion 
of infinitude hinted at in the bold assertion that fleas 
have other fleas that bite 'em, while these in turn have 



I04 TOADS AND TOADIES. 

Other fleas, and so, ad infinitum. And it is just barely 
possible that even the most minute of these invisible 
parasites have their plans and their purposes, their prow- 
lings by night and their piracies by day, and are never to 
be reached, even by the Press or any other tremendous 
and awful mortal agency, with its burdens of wisdom 
and its ponderous weight of advice. Is there such a 
thing as impertinence of man to beast, bird, insect or 
toad? The demoralizing suspicion haunts us that there 
may be. We would rather trust Washoe Jim to pilot our 
way across country at midnight in the dark of the moon 
than the most learned professor of Yale or Harvard ; and 
we doubt if any school ever w411 teach a sounder wisdom 
than the everyday injunction of one boy to another 
to ^^mind your own business." And in this vein of 
self-doubting we are led to admit that the Toad knows 
more about his affairs than even this Inquisitor and that 
it is quite as safe if not as agreeable to take our drinking 
water as we find it and not attempt the vain task of rid- 
ding its globlules of the infinitessimal monsters which 
Nature has invited to live and swim therein. If this 
world is governed too much, so also it may be possible 
that things are already quite as well ordered by the hand 
of Nature as mankind might order them, even to the 
prowlings and night-walkings and unseemly dissipations 
of this Toad of our casual mention and acquaintance. 
And now why may we not venture upon a short ser- 
mon of our own devising? These Leaves be multitudi- 
nous and many-hued — maugre the grayish green of their 



TOADS AND TOADIES. I05 

prevailing habit. A word or two to those good souls who 
trust in Providence : Barnaby, going hungry and forlorn 
to his hovel or his stable-yard for a supperless sleep finds 
a five-dollar piece in the road, and if he be at all a de- 
vout man, thanks Providence ; and if he be a temperate 
man and a provident, he suppHes his lean larder and 
makes sure that pinching hunger and gaunt famine are 
kept away for a season ; if he be an improvident man, 
which is likely, he seeks the nearest dram-shop, becomes 
o'er all the ills of life victorious and wakens to a condi- 
tion all the more hopeless for his Providential find. But 
suppose Barnaby makes the best and most prudent use 
of his find, what about Reuben, the poor fellow who lost 
that piece of money? Where does his share of the 
Providence find application ? Is a hole in his pocket 
Providential ? Or is the treacherous out-flirting of his 
handkerchief, bringing the loose coin with it, an act or 
accident of fateful grace intended by the Great Mystery 
for Barnaby's benefit ? Or is the Providence of a grate- 
ful rain, which restores to life the drooping verdure of 
Farmer Weedhoe's potato crop to be regarded as an un- 
providential calamity for the disastrous drenching which 
it gives poor Redtop's windrows of new-mown hay ? We 
are selfish creatures, we men and women : and somehow 
we are at times so wrapped in our own conceit and so 
much absorbed by our own interests that we are like to 
take to ourselves, as if especially meant for us, a cleans- 
ing shower, a health-restoring breeze, a sudden burst of 
sunlight or an intervening cloud. When nature or acci- 



I06 TOADS AND TOADIES. 

dent or happy coincidences fall the way we would have 
things trend, we see the Everlasting bending things out of 
their course to please and gratify ourselves, and our con- 
ceit bears us up with the self-consolation that the Hand of 
Providence has been opened for our especial behoof. 
And yet the seasons come and go ; the tide rises and 
falls ; the sun comes in the east and goes away in the 
west; the moon and the stars enlighten the night; the thun- 
der of the cataract and the roll and roar of the ocean 
never cease ; men are born and die and are buried in the 
ceaseless, relentless revolution of Time, all heedless of 
man and his wishes, and with movements too vast, too 
eternal, and too systematic to be attributed to what we 
call Providence, but which are the growth and progress 
and evolvment of that which we cannot help feeling is 
stronger than Providence, Nature herself That which 
causes the tree to put forth leaves and buds and blossoms; 
which makes the grass always green and the many colored 
flowers to obey their seeds and push aside the earth and 
reach up toward the sky ; that which invites the birds to 
come and go, and build their nests and sing their songs ; 
that which, year after year, bids the bees to swarm and 
maintain their colonies and perfect their wonderful work ; 
that which tells the worm to resolve itself into the chrys- 
alis, and inspires the chrysalis into the splendid butterfly ; 
that which causes the soft down to grow upon the horns 
of the young deer, and makes the doe seek her mate ; 
that which makes the robin always and through all ages 
sing the same song, and the wild duck preserve the same 



TOADS AND TOADIES. I07 

colors and the same habits — this Power is that against 
whose inexorable course and force we, weaklings that we 
are, invoke the convenient mystery and interposition of a 
Special Providence. Nature changes not her course. Not 
any human fabric or invention can be so systematic as 
Herself. Look how sentient she is ! Touch one of her 
blades of grass with the sickle or scythe ; girdle but one 
of her trees ; interrupt but one of her processes, and see 
how quick she resents it, or how hurt she is. Mark the 
regularity of her movements and her workings. The 
chronologist can tell you the length of every day, from 
now on, until the expanse of time exhausts the compre- 
hension ; the astronomer can tell you to a minute, when 
the stars and the comets and the showers of meteors will 
come and go ; the navigator sails his ship by exact and 
inexorable rules ; and the moon herself marks the ebbmg 
and flowing of the great tides of the ever restless sea. 
The earthquake, the cloud-burst, the tidal wave, the tem- 
pest and the lightning, these are no more Special Provi- 
dences than the gentle shower, the cooling summer breeze, 
the fragrance of flowers, the cooing of doves or the blithe 
carol of the gladsome lark. Man lives his life and ful- 
fills the measure of his destiny ; but God has given him 
high hope and self-assertion and energy and courage ; and 
here and there these are helped and stimulated by some 
surprises and timely incidents ; and in his exhaustless 
vanity and self-conceit he takes these to himself, and, full 
satisfied of his importance in the eye of his Maker, he 
takes courage of his consequence, struts in the face of 



Io8 TOADS AND TOADIES. 

patient Mother Nature and marshals himself the way that 
he was going ! Labor well and honestly ; strive with 
courage and hearty manfulness ; move on toward some 
high object, never looking back, and never folding the 
hands in weak idleness and impotent despair ; move in 
the courses which Nature has always told us are the wisest 
and the best, and let Providence wreak its special kind- 
nesses and bring its welcome accidents as it may. The 
hand was made for toil; the limbs were made for exer- 
cise ; the brain was fashioned for thought ; the senses 
were given to us to be used in healthful moderation ; the 
functions obey certain laws, and fail of performance if 
those laws are unheeded ; and we who depart from these 
laws and lazily and o'er fondly look to Providence for re- 
lief deserve the many disappointments which enter into 
our experience. Let each man do his part bravely and 
honestly, observing the plain laws of Nature's statute 
book, ever ready-at-hand and always intelligible. The 
Future will all too soon be the Past, and we must recol- 
lect that 

"The moving finger writes, and having v^^rit 
Moves on ; nor all your piety nor wit 
Can lure it back to cancel half a line, 

Nor all your tears wipe out a word of it." 



NoTA Bene. — The younger and more demonstrative members of the flock, 
who like to sit in the gallery during services, will please not be quite so hasty in 
their exit, but try and restrain their impulse to gain the street until after the 
Shepherd has pronounced the benediction and made the announcement of the 
Dorcas Society Meetings for the week. 




DATES AND MARE'S MILK. 




DATES AND MARE'S MILK. 

Til r HEN we traveled in Arabia and Bessarabia widi 
Belzoni, many was the day we lived on the nutri- 
tious fruit of the date palm, and many was the grateful 
draft we had of mare's milk. They were the best we 
had ; and we gave of our portion to those who traveled 
our weary way and were an hungered. Such humble fare 
is a good deal better than nothing ; and hunger is the 

best sauce Wonder who wrote this charming little 

poem : 

DAILY DYING. 

The maple does not shed its leaves 
In one tempestuous scarlet rain, 
But softly, when the south wind grieves, 
Slow, wandering over wood and plain, 
One by one they waver through 
The Indian Summer's hazy blue. 
And droop at last on the forest mold. 
Coral and ruby, and burning gold. 

Our death is gradual, like these ; 

We die with every waning day ; 
There is no waft of sorrow's breeze 

But bears some heart-leaf slow away. 



112 DATES AND MARES MILK. 

Up and on the last To Be ! 
Our life is going eternally ; 
Less of life than we had last year 

Throbs in your veins and throbs in mine, 
But the way to heaven is growing clear, 
And the gates of the city fairer shine, 
And the day that our latest treasures flee. 
Wide they will open for you and me. 

In his instructive and reassuring article in the North 
American Review, Ralph Waldo Emerson says : " In 
ignorant ages it was common to vaunt the human superi- 
ority by underrating the instinct of other animals ; but a 
better discernment finds that the difference is only of less 
and more. Experiment shows that the bird and the dog 
reason as the hunter does, that all the animals show the 
same good sense in their humbler walk that the man who 
is their enemy or friend does ; and if it be in smaller 
measure, yet it is not diminished, as his often is, by freak 
and folly." Verily do we believe what the great and good 
philosopher thus hints at. We do believe that those two 
dogs which make such a racket whenever any stranger 
comes within the gates have their small supply of reason. 
Else, why doth that small, guilty-looking, wiry dog tuck 
his tail under his b.idy and shy off when yon mother-hen 
bristles up at him ? The rogue ! When his master or 
mistress is not nigh he is as bold as a lion in presence of 
that hen, and will dispute with her the path or scramble 
with her for scraps of bread and meat. But he knows — 
his conscience tells him — -that any annoyance on his part 
toward that hen and her brood will not be tolerated by 



DATES AND MARE'S MILK. II3 

the powers that be, and so he affects a humiUty and pre- 
tends to a terror which are not native to him. This argues, 
nay, it shows, reason and design — the reason of the pre- 
varicator and the design of the uncandid. We are 
acquainted with a canary-bird who is one of the self-made 
individuals of our times ! He has been provifled with a 
toy bell inside of his cage. Nobody told him it was a 
bell, or that it would ring ; and yet he rings it with as 
much regularity and skill as if he had the education of a 
collegiate. He comes almost up to the standard of our 
lamented friend, Mr. James Dealey's Australian magpie. 
That extraordinary and most gifted bird, second only to 
Barnaby Rudge's Raven, knew this writer as well as he 
knew his own voice. That he met us with a tone and 
note of defiant raillery, if not of detraction, is not to the 
point. What we maintain is his intelligence, his reason. 
We always suspected that he drank to excess and on the 
sly. It is our theory (he is dead and gone, and leaves no 
relatives whose feelings may be hurt by the discussion) 
that he used to help himself out of the uncorked bottles 
in the morning while the Chinaman was setting the bar 
to rights. Possibly he and the Mongol, being neighbors, 
as it were, understood this matutinal dissipation, and mu- 
tually winked at it. At all events, we have reason to be- 
lieve that Mag would never have got into that fatal mor- 
tar-bed if he hadn't been indulging too freely in the cup 
which inebriates. And the very fact that he did drink, 
taking Byron's theory, establishes the indubitabiHty of his 
reflective powers. 



114 THE LOST LIGHT OF OTHER DAY. 

The Lost Light of Other Days. — When we have 
had a good sun-bath in such deUcious weather as we are 
all blessed with these Summer-like days, we cannot help 
taking into account the sum-total of radiant sunshine 
which, expended upon these hills and valleys in all the 
years and years during which the Great American Basin 
was an unknown land, was quite lost and wasted, so far 
as appreciative men is concerned. Here has streamed 
warmth and light enough, season by season, ever since 
Job's Peak began to look down into these pleasant val- 
leys, to have supplied the needs of men and women and 
chfldren in sufficient numbers to make a history as won- 
derful as that which lies between the shadowy days of 
Arthur's Table Round and the present phase and period 
of the Victorian Age. Look at what has been withheld 
from bleak New England in the way of sunlight in the 
short years since the Mayflower, and then tell me if what 
has been lavished upon these lazy, happy Lidians and 
rabbits, squaws and sage-hens, hath not illustrated that 
Nature knows no morals and exhibits none of the partial 
preferences of an enlightened toadyism? The balmiest 
zephyr that ever swept across the cheek of tender maid- 
enhood plays unheeded with the sterile sands of the lone- 
liest desert ; and the most delicate tints of dawn and 
gloaming are as profuse where no art has come as upon 
the towers of the loftiest cathedrals. You must come to 
Nature to win her favors. She is not allured by wealth 
and station; but oh, she returns, fourfold, the hand which 
brings its labors within the circle of her gentlest influence ! 



SWAPPING. 115 

Rise, my friend of the night-time work, rise with the early 
song of the meadow-lark and ride out to meet the com- 
ing lights and far-reaching shadows of the morning. You 
shall see long stretches of color, across the verdant fields, 
as beautiful as any dream of Italy; and there is a wealth 
of health in these morning draughts of pure sunshine and 
bracing air such as is not always known in a fairer clime. 
And a good sniff of the pungent sage-brush is better than 
any or all the hot and stifling airs of shops and offices. 
Appropriating somebody's April song to our own May 
day purpose we will sing : 

Sweet May-time, when you try, with your sunshine and your sky, 
Your wind breathing low and your birds that sing together, 
Your misty blue that fills the hollows of the hills, 
You can make a day of most enchanting weather. 

Says Emerson : 

Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird. 
Blue-coated, — flying before from tree to tree. 
Courageous, sing a delicate overture 
To lead the tardy concert of the year. 



Boys make astonishing work of their swappings and 
tradings. We know a boy who had as populous a bag 
of marbles as any boy ever need to see, and who went 
and swapped off all his marbleous wealth for an old odd 
bit of sewing machine — just the most worthless of plates 
and cogs and castings. Yonder lies an old wagon tire. 
That specimen of discarded and worn-out mechanism 



k 



Il6 SWAPPING. 

cost a bran-new peg top. Along comes a fellow with a 
great big mule collar. He says he got it for letting an- 
other fellow play on his harmonica. (The borrower blew 
the whole Vorks' out of that instrument until there is no 
more music in it than there is in a Patent-office Report). 
We recollect of swapping off a new sled once, when 
coasting was splendid, for a German-silver pencil case 
whose slides wouldn't shove, and an imitation gold pen 
that wouldn't any more write than a new-made Democrat. 
And oh, how a rapscallion of a boy once did cheat some- 
body out of pair of double-guttered skates, for a brass 
pistol with a knob on the end of the muzzle and a lock 
that was in a state of incurable paralysis. And somehow 
it is a bad beginning, this early susceptibility to be 
cheated. We do believe it follows a man through life. 
What is known as horse-sense is a requisite condition 
precedent to a successful swap. Horse sense is rare. 
Swaps are frequent. Therefore the demoralization of 
cheating keeps going on just as the decay of vegetable 
and animal matter is a constant process. Still, we never 
get so used to being swindled as to learn to like it. A 
sort of indifference ensues, after a prolonged and pro- 
gressive experience in this regard; but we never can like 
that which hurts us and wounds our pride. Alluding to 
a sort of optimism of practice, a writer in the Westmin- 
ster Review for October, 1864, discussing the character 
of Charles Dickens, says : '^ There is a view which treats 
misfortune, crime and whatever makes men miserable, 
as so much foreign matter introduced, by a kind of di- 



THE EDITORIAL ^^WE. II7 

vine accident, into an organism expressly conducted for 
happiness. Those who adopt it do not attempt to 
explain away the facts, but they insist on the duty of get- 
ting rid, as fast as possible, of whatever interferes with 
the general well-being ; they also have the peculiarity of 
believing that they can do so." And so of cheats and 
swindlers. We deal with them as if we who get the worst 
of our bargains did not expect to get the best of them. 
Also we who like to be regarded as moral teachers treat 
the sharper class as if they were the result of some " di- 
vine accident " and not of as natural a growth and breed 
as we who are of such exemplary goodness. Further- 
more be it said that we speak of sudden deaths and vio- 
lent endings as if death were something out of the line 
of natural occurrences, — as if killing and dying had not 
been quite as usual, ever since the world began as being 
born and clothed and wed. We may be sure that not in 
our time will ever the smaller race of cheats — the boy- 
swappers — be improved off the face of the earth. 



The Editorial "We." — In the somewhat eruptive 
and pimply '^ reforms " to which literature, and especially 
newspaper literature is periodically subject, we hear and 
see, every now and again some scoldings, entreaties, de- 
nunciations and sarcasms anent personalism in the use of 
the editorial "we." We, (that is all of us), are often 
told that the said editorial " we " is not a personal pro- 
noun at all, but rather a nondescript part of speech sig- 



Il8 THE EDITORIAL ^'WE." 

nifying something which never grew, which is lighted from 
within and without by a light that '' never was on sea or 
land " and which stands for a sort of usher or sponsor, or 
pew-opener, as it were, and altogether an irresponsible 
and intangible thing. Also that this ^^ we '' should never 
mean " I '' when dealing with broad principles and the 
discussion of matters and things of a general and not an 
individual character. Of course all this refers to the peo- 
ple whose business it is to write for newspapers and not 
for moral and educational and religious vehicles like the 
Morning Appeal. An editor dealing with a ponderous 
subject like the French Elections, the Transit of Venus 
or the Effects of tlie Reno Fair upon the Destinies of the 
Human Race has no right (under the laws of good taste) 
to make " we " do duty as a procurator for his egotism 
and so take the place of the inconsequential pronoun 
" I." But, as everybody knows, these Notes and Que- 
ries, except as the whimsey asserts itself, are in nowise 
subject to any such regulations and arbitrary dicta as this. 
The fact is this Collector only lets '' we " into a place in 
this column as an informal guest — ^just as one receives her 
aunt or her sister-in-law in the kitchen — sort o' one of the 
family. But rights is rights ! Here, in this space and 
place the pronoun does mean something. The times 
when it is a dummy are the exceptions. The beauty of 
your well considered Note or your categorical Query lies 
in its egotism. William Hazlitt, speaking of the *' Tat- 
tler " and similar writings, tells us that ^^ Montaigne, who 
was the father of this kind (the "Tattler" kind) of per- 



SOCIETY VERSES. II9 

sonal authorship among the moderns, in which the reader 
is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with the 
writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnanimous 
and undisguised egotist." Now here is high authority 
for taking the most riotous kind of Hberties with the ed- 
itorial ''we," even to laughing in its face, standing it on 
its head, or leading it out into the hall and showing it the 
door. But one may keep this convertible and adaptive 
bit of editorial costumery within reach, and use it as the 
humor takes him. 



The x\utumn grows apace ! October is upon us. Now 
get in your wood. Get ready for the siege which the 
weatherwise tell us is preparing by the skirmish Hues of 
Winter. It won't do to lag and loiter and give way to 
the sentimentals. Our attention has fallen upon some 
verses of society, so called, by a New York dilettante — a 
Custom House officer, in fact. They are all about the 
using, by venturesome women, of their husbands' neck- 
ties for garters. Of the conglomerate picture made by 
this strange, unnatural association, the poet has sung as 
follows : 

** Beside a pair of broidered hose, 

In sweet disorder did they lay, 
Fresh and unsullied as a rose — 

Both hose and ties of pearly gray. " 

These lines were written by a person who signs himself 
Barry Gray. One of his critics speaks of him as a transi- 



I20 SOCIETY VERSES. 

tive heterophemist. His verses are not altogether un- 
pardonable ; but what right of consideration have they 
in view of everybody's need of a store of fuel for the 
coining Winter? Rather this should be the refrain : 

To get butter for my bread 
And wood in my woodshed, 

Is my aim ; 
Even butter by the cord 
And some hundred pounds of wood 

Is all the same. 

For it doesn't matter much 
How one gets supplies of such 

So he gets 'em ; 
And some firkins of good wood 
And some butter — say a cord, 

Would be welcome ! 

We are quite sure, always, of the approving kindle in 
the eye of each Constant Reader. These will have noted 
the unvarying tendency of this querist to promote, ])raise 
and practice a wise, operative, conservative economy. 
There is, this Notary flatters himself, something of tone 
in these N's and Q's ; but we are never above the do- 
mesticals or disdainful of that which is in the line of fru- 
gal housewifery. Philanthropy is never exclusive, gin- 
gerly or grandiferous. It is too gentle and solicitous of 
its ends and purposes to stand on a frigid and rigid dig- 
nity. 



#^ 



I 



A CHAPTER ON CANES, CHINAMEN AND 
OTHER OBJECTS OF INTEREST. 



» 



A CHAPTER ON CANES, CHINAMEN AND 
OTHER OBJECTS OF INTEREST. 

n^HERE is a certain amount of dignity about a well de- 
veloped cane. We think there will hardly be any ques- 
tion of the correctness of this conclusion. To be sure 
it depends upon the kind of cane. A switchy affair with 
a woman's 1 — g for a handle, may be or may not be 
within the limits; hwt p?'ima fade, it is just the least bit 
dandyfied and rakish. An old hoe-handle or an undis- 
guised piece of lath betokens either the pressing needs of 
invalided poverty or the shiftlessness of moral decay. An 
improvised bit of cottonwood or a temporary make- 
shift of willow betray themselves. They do not belong 
in the cane family at all. They are mere sticks, and do 
not rise even to the consequence of an imitation. But 
a decorously crooked hickory, either varnished in the 
bark or clothed in respectable black; a straight j iece of 
rosewood or a cutting from a tree on the Hermitage, duly 
capped with ivory or silver, or, in rare instances of great 
merit, gold, these assume their places, as by the right of 
birth, pedigree and association, among the very gentry of 
the cane family, and they are respected accordingly. 
These lend as well as receive dignity from their highly 



124 CANES. 

respectable owners. The honors are easy because evenly 
reciprocal. But ev^en the most stately and decorous of 
canes may, at unfortunate conjunctures, be the cause of 
no little mortification to those whose attendants and con- 
stant companions they are. Indeed, the more dignity 
there is between and mutually shared by cane and cane- 
owner, the greater the danger of this occasional humilia- 
tion. It may, and indeed too frequently does, happen 
in this wise : The wearer of the cane is progressing, with 
a stride which is sufficiently stately to assert his well 
sustained character, and bringing the ferule of his cane 
down upon the plank sidewalk at becoming intervals, 
when he discovers coming toward him some ladies of his 
acquaintance. The full measure of his native gallantry 
is immediately prepared to assert itself The ladies ap- 
proach ; he gathers together his blandest smile ; the meet- 
ing and greeting are taking place as the supreme passing 
moment occurs and culminates ; he raises his hat with 
his left hand, his right grasping his cane ; the graceful ex- 
periment (it is always an experiment, even to the most 
self-possessed) is on the very verge of success, w^hen the 
highly respectable cane, flurried by the emotions of the 
moment into of erdoing its own part, sticks in a misbegot- 
ten crack between the planks ; a sudden and painful 
shock takes place, an easeful poise becomes a horrid writh- 
ing, and all is lost! This is one of the dangers besetting 
the habits indicated, and forces upon our consideration 
one of three courses — that is to say, either to abandon 
the cane, forego in ignominy all attempts at doing the 



A CHINESE BARDOLPH. 1 25 

handsome thing when meetmg the ladies, or tear up the 
treacherous planks and replace them with brick or stone- 



I 



A Chinese Bardolph. — It is not among the Celestials 
of one's acquaintance that he would think to seek for a man 
whose face should illustrate Shakspeare's sketch of Bar- 
dolph. And yet this deponent saw yesterday with his naked 
eyes a Chinaman with a face like unto a flaming torch, so 
red it was, and so culminating was that redness in his nose, 
which stood upon his face like a volcano. Not drunk, 
but flushed with something akin, we suspect, to St. An- 
thony's fire, if the fire of St. Anthony might descend 
upon the face of an unregenerate pagan. It was not a 
natural-seeming red, but rather it seemed a radish red, 
shamelessly blushing through the jaundiced yellow and 
bilious brown of the varlet's hide. It was not unlike that 
dull, unwholesome red which comes suddenly and hectic 
through a dirty tavern-window, when the lights within are 
tallow-dips and the night is damp and far spent— some- 
thing unnatural and depraved — ^foxy, a painting critic 
would call it. The suffusion of the cheeks was very un- 
pleasant because of its sickly hue, but \^ere the color 
had mounted nosewards and come to a nead upon the 
nob-like apex of that bulging member it had a mad look, 
like burning meat. '' There's a fellow somewhat near the 
door," says the Porter's man, in Henry VIII ; '' he 
should be a brazier by his face ; for, o' my conscience, 
twenty of the dog-days reign in's nose." This red- 



126 A STRAY MAGPIE. 

nosed Chinaman did not seem to be heated with wine. 
His step was steady and his manner was quiet, and he 
seemed bent on some sober errand ; and so we find it 
difficult to account for the brick-dust hue of his face. It 
is not impossible that, like unto Poe in his earHer con- 
tact with the Raven, all his soul was in him burning, and 
that those angry tints were given out by the undying em- 
bers of his consuming spirit. In some sense, it being a 
raw and gusty morning, there was a comfort in the look 
of the man — as of a peripatetic Champion coal stove 
exhibiting its heating qualities through the isinglass at its 
front door, and going among stoveless men asking them 
to come and be warmed. And yet, to the Caucasian 
mind, this fellow's beacon light seemed an impertinence. 
What right has a Chinaman to go about burlesquing the 
noses of his brandy-drinking betters ? It is as if he were 
flaunting in the face of the Customs officers a success- 
fully smuggled scarlet silk. For here is a nose whose col- 
oring matter evidently never paid the duties, which has 
evaded the revenues, which mocks the protective tariff, 
and comes among us impertinent, abnormal, unaccount- 
able and contraband ! 



A Stray Magpie. — It is a difficult task, incidental to 
what Mr. Tilton calls the Problem of Life, to determine the 
nice indicative distinctions between that which is wild and 
independent and what is tame and domesticated. But we 
are disturbed by a certain experience which has brought its 



A STRAY MAGPIE. 1 27 

puzzling uncertainties. We have been visited (in a personal 
sense) by a magpie. He came yesterday morning quite 
uninvited and unexpectedly. Either he was slightly over- 
stimulated with his draughts of sunshine and the dews of 
morning, or he was o'er young to leave his mammy, and 
was an indiscreet and too venturesome wanderer from the 
maternal fold, or he was an escaped prisoner. His plu- 
mage suggested an adolescent bridegroom in search of 
worms ; his gait betokened the unsteadiness of inexperi- 
ence (as he was watched by very young and curious eyes 
from the kitchen door); while his seeming familiarity with 
the house-surroundings bespoke him an escape from the 
confinement of the cage. After cocking his wise-looking 
eye at such things as attracted his curiosity, he essayed 
to fly. It is but just to the eventuality of his first trial 
to say that the evidence in favor of his arrest on the score 
of intoxication was very vivid. He actually reeled — in a 
wingish way. Finally he got the better of his potables 
and flew into a plum tree. There the matronly instinct 
of a housewife sought his nearer acquaintance. It was 
in vain. He flew, in a flopping and pin-featherful fash- 
ion, into higher trees ; and when we last saw him he was 
holding himself at bay, being badly badgered by a chat- 
tering colony of orioles, who came to look upon him as 
an intruder, a spy and a magpious Uhlan, as it were, into 
the realms of oriolan nestitude. But out of a sense of 
fear that we may have been harboring a lawful chattel or 
a fugitive from rightful custody, we cause the following to 
be blazoned to a magpie-seeking world : 



128 



SOME TROUBLED WATERS. 



CAME TO THE SUBSCRIBER'S PREMISES : 

An apparently young person of the Magpie Family. Following is 
a description of the same : Limbs seemingly perfect in construction, 
but lacking strength ; plumage very fresh and fine, and with a shade 
(of silk) of a changeable greenish hue about the tail; pin-back, very 
closely fitting ; wings and winging quite uncertain ; eye bright and 
curious ; bill too long for presentation these hard times. Should say 
he meant well ; but actions strange, not to say suspicious. The 
owner can have him upon payment of charges. 

I t. n. q. a. The Annotator. 



Some Troubled Waters. — The purling rill brings 
a soothing sense of peace to the tired and troubled 
mind ; the gentle shower which falleth upon the just 
and the unjust, calms the fretted nerves of wearied 
men and women ; the majestic surgings of the mighty 
sea, beating forever upon the helpless strand, bring 
repose to the shattered heart ; and the great roar of 
the ever-falling Niagara, dropping the substance of an 
inland sea, moment by moment, through the listening 
ages, into its destined gulf, brings respite and nepenthe 
to the wistful soul of the dwellers in hot cities and beside 
the fevered torrents of restless humanity; but when our 
rival water companies get by the ears there is no hydro- 
pathy which can assuage their exacerbated state, although 
the placid surface of H — 's calm and unruffled philosophy 
plead for peace beside the more turbulent waters of the 
bubblesome S. These be warmish water ways, forsooth ; 
and what will come up out of this perennial fountain of 



ALTITUDINOUS. 1 29 

difference, whether the cool drops of assuagement from 
the hydrants of peace or the hot filterings of wrath from 
the oozy springs of dispute, Time, the great hydrometer, 
alone can determine. Meantime there is drouth in the 
pail and famine in the scuttled butt. 



Altitudinous. — Some lightsome and inconsiderate re- 
marks or reflections of ours the other day would seem to jus- 
tify the conclusion that we are not altogether reverential 
toward such scientifical and semi-scientifical places of re- 
fuge as are provided by those nooks and crannies of the 
Dictionary which harbor such words as electricity, dualism, 
psychology and altitude. But there is something in "Al- 
titude." We mean to say that we have discovered, or 
think we have discovered, some places where the up- 
heaved earth, asserting its warty conditions upon the sur- 
face of things, brings us within the realms and conse- 
quences of the air. When the earth spreads itself out 
in a gentle, undulating, fair-maidenish way, mid-march 
between the mountains and the strand, it arrays itself 
and opens the vast, enticing panorama of its beauties of 
copse and brook-side and laughing dale. Then it reigns 
supreme. When in angry mood or in the mood of mood- 
ish majesty, it uprears its face among the clouds and airs 
and Boreal winds, it suffers itself to be rudely assailed by 
these more violent elements of the other spheres. That 
is why the earth should endeavor to be round and not 
eruptive, pimply and tetter-strewn as her mountains 



130 ALTITUDINOUS. 

make her seem. Nature has her girUsh ways ; and her 
maturities Uke the recognition of adolescence. We do 
not paint and simper and dye our hair, unjustified I The 
bare earth covers itself with grass, and old oaks grow 
green again and lift their tender, blighted acorns to the 
August sun. But there is a solid significance and real- 
ness in altitude. Eggs which can be boiled in three 
minutes into a toughness of texture which makes the 
yelk a yellow ^^taw" and the white a gelatinous fabric of 
porcelain, at the sea-level, require five for their similar 
boiling here. Everybody knows this — everybody who 
has slept in blankets upon bleak hillsides and dreamed of 
the home-land yonder. But what of it? Why this Lex- 
icographical and Scientifical reference ? What about alti- 
tude ? Well, only this, that that sturdy young rider and 
leaper, W. C, who vaults over more camels than carried 
the jewels of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, told this 
Scribe that just in proportion as he got hauled high up, 
cloudwards, he experienced difficulty in performing his 
feats. He found that in Virginia City it troubled him 
to turn seven somersaults. Here he could turn thirteen. 
At tide-water there is no limit to his fiip-flopancy. Go to, 
go to, oh vanity of brutehood. Man is your master — 
even if he has to take a springboard to help him to the 
assertion of his superiority. But altitude has its effects 
and its significances, as this splendid young athlete has 
testified. 



TOM THUMB, ETC. 



TOM THUMB, ETC. 

CTREET scenes are not necessarily of an exciting 
character to be attractive to the crowd. We have 
known as many as three large men to stand by with 
their attention closely riveted to the blacking of a pair of 
boots of merely ordinary dimensions. We have seen a 
great deal of curiosity evinced for the progress of a white- 
wash brush. A well-squirted hose is a source of never- 
failing interest. The graining of a door or the painting 
of a sign^ — these are very popular entertainments. But 
it was a great sight, yesterday morning, to see the crowd 
of juveniles that gathered about the barber-shop when it 
was known that Tom Thumb had gone in there to get 
shaved ! The chief attendant let down the blinds. That 
made a corner on keyholes. We must confess that we 
who are thus inviting the criticism of the judicious to 
these sights and scenes would not be averse to seeing the 
barber in the act of putting Tom through his paces in 
the tonsorial art. " Easy over the pebbles, Paul," says 
Dickens's small pretender to a beard. But why should 
not a traveled gentlernan of forty-odd take his shave, un- 
disturbed by the rude stare of the o'er-curious multitude ? 
It is not the bigness any more than it is the age that tells. 



134 THE CIRCUS. 



n 



It is the blood ! Charles Stratton, Esq., has received more 
visitors and done more traveling these five and thirty 
years than any man living, big or little. Then why should 
he not be shaven how he will ? We noticed that Tom 
seemed to enjoy the summer breeze on Sunday. When 
he had quit a small discussion, and had been stood up 
alongside a handsome little boy of six, he said he was 
three feet four. We think he prevaricated. It seems 
cruel to deny a few inches to as helpless a celebrity as 
Mr. Stratton, but we would sell him short. We think he 
is disposed to brag of his hight and to give himself more 
inches than Gunter would conscientiously subscribe to. It 
is to be remarked, as among the curiosities of showman- 
ship, that a little man like Mr. Stratton is likely to prove 
even a greater attraction than persons of a more com- 
manding stature. Thus, Theodore Tilton, who stands a 
good six-foot-two in his stockings (and night-gown), had 
m.any less visitors than Tom Thumb, who is two-feet-six 
in his boots ! This goes to show that large and small are 
merely comparative terms. The race is not always to the 
straddle-bug, nor the battle to the lathy ! 



The Circus as an Inevitable Event. — Apropos of 
Tom Thumb is a consideration of the circus which is 
about to burst upon us, circuses in general, and, finally, 
circus-day itself Now be it said in all soberness of state- 
ment, the circus is coming. This fact is proclaimed in 



THE CIRCUS. 135 

all the picturesque glories of the bill-sticker's art. It 
meets the eye in the form of portraits of distinguished 
equestrians ; in pictures of the gifted India Rubber Man; 
in life-size and life-colored prints of surprising horses ; in 
blood-curdling scenes in African jungles ; in droves of 
giraffes fleeing before the pursuing tiger "in a yellow cloud 
of fear " ; in various portraits of the Unicorn^ and in all 
the pomp and circumstance of measureless seas of post- 
ers. Well, one might as well try and stop the Winter sea- 
son with a bonfire or a warm lemonade as to attempt the 
interposition of any effective word against the circus. 
Not Mr. Montgomery Queen's Circus (and menagerie) in 
particular, but any circus ; or, what is more to the point, 
the circus-going impulse in the heart of hearts of this 
great and liberty-loving people. Before and since Paul 
fought with beasts at Ephesus, before the Olympian 
games, before the Majesty of the Orient sent presents of 
peacocks and apes to Solomon, before any papyrus writ- 
ing was made to tell the tale of a nation's history, there 
were circuses and circus men. 

Later : — It is our duty as the publisher of an import- 
ant advertisement to try and say something upon this 
great and absorbing topic. We referred the other day to 
the antiquity of the circus. We dated the menagerie 
back to the Ark we think. At any rate it deserves to be 
thus venerated. But we confess that all this is an eva- 
sion. There is such a thing as overwhelming the too 
susceptible mind. We feel stifled, as it were, past all in- 



136 THE CIRCUS. 

spiration by the very abundance and glamour and highly 
wrought system (for it is nothing short of a system) of 
posters with which this subject is poured down upon us. 
We despair of doing the subject justice. A very fair 
lady asked us in ^^ an aside " yesterday if the children knew 
of the coming of the circus. Know it ! my dear madam, 
they feel it in the air, they breathe it in the breeze, they 
hear it in the song of birds, they dream it in their dreams. 
Your true lion knows your true prince. To be a child 
and not know that the circus is coming is to be a hot- 
house plant, a bird reared in a cage, a Casper Hauser, a 
toad embedded in a thousand depths of sandstone. Know 
it ! Almost might one say that they don't know anything 
else. Well, it will be, doubtless, not only all that their 
young fancies have painted it ; but all that the artists 
who composed and executed those marvelous posters 
have portrayed. As to the adult interest in this great 
subject it is undiminished. The fever never dies out. 
Once a circus-goer, always a circus-goer. We get bedaz- 
zled by the spangles, and the fascination never leaves us. 
But it is to be borne especially in mind that the Rhinoc- 
eros is a two horned one, and that the horned horse is 
a horned horse sure enough. You may hunt the sage 
brush far and near and you shall never bag a two horned 
rhinoceros. If your retriever brings in a single horned 
one you may boast of your good luck. As to the horned 
horse, did he not, after fighting with the lion for the Brit- 
ish crown betake himself to the shades and shadows of 
the myths — associating himself with the phoenix and the 



THE CIRCUS. 137 

dodo ? But here he comes again ! Also this way comes 
Mr. Merryman .... We thought of fame and the strange 
sheen of its sometime ghtter when we saw Bob Inger- 
soll's handsome head on one side of a rum shop screen, 
and the two horned rhinoceros on the other. But all this 
world is a circus ; and a showman is a showman ! 

CIRCUS DAY. 

We who dwell in cities and towns and other central- 
izing settlements are doubly blessed and doubly visited 
when circus day comes. First comes circus day. then 
come the people who want to see the circus, and then 
come the circus people who want to have the circus seen. 
These bring fish to our net — the net which we of the 
city spread for those who are swimming in the currents 
that like u i best and are nearest to our likes and profits. 
Yesterday was circus day. The farm people from far and 
near, and they who dwell in the less accessible settle- 
ments hard by, came in in great numbers. 

*' There were the old whose hairs were few, 
Or white with the memory of the day," 
When first they saw the tall emu 

And heard the wild ass bray his bray ; 

There were the proud who court renown ; 

There were bright ringlets richly curled ; 
There were the boys who think the clown 

The funniest man in all this world. 

There were the girls who always think 

That nothing's ever half so nice 
As lemonades that lovers drink 

Quite innocent of ''sticks" or ice, 



1 



138 THE CIRCUS. 

Served to them both in just one glass, 
Each taking turn and drinking half — 

Oblivious to the world who pass, 

And laugh as bright folks always laugh. 

There were the boys who would not fail, 
If this wide world should crack asunder, 

To take all chances that avail 

To crawl the tempting canvas under ; 

There were the blacks, there were the whites. 
There were the rustics red and brown. 

There were the usual rows and fights. 

There were the lads who'd walked to town ; 

There were the mothers and the dads. 

Who lugged the babies in their arms. 
There were the good ones and the bads, 

And men from barrooms and from farms. 

And when the pageant all was o'er, 

And lids had shut on tired eyes, 
And there was nothing, nothing more 

To justify one's wild surprise — 

We thanked the gods that now at last 
The circus-time, so strange and queer, 

Was finished, ended, done and past, 
For one whole blessed, blissful year ! 

All this has oozed out of a vagabond Muse like music 
out of an unthrottled steam caliope, left to its own un- 
checked emotions. We sat down to do some honest puff- 
ing of this circus. We have all along been assuring our 
readers that the two-horned rhinoceros was a fact. And 



THE CIRCUS. 139 

it is a fact. He is a very perfect specimen, a very singu- 
lar and interesting creature. His head is shaped hke a 
Mansard roof covered with asphaltum. His front tooth 
seems to have grown up through his nose, and his wis- 
dom tooth has come out through his eyebrow. His eye 
is located in his upper lip. He seems to be a cross be- 
tween a deformed elephant and the debris of an old In- 
dia-rubber warehouse. Noah must have been restrained 
by some wholesome hesitation before he consented to let 
this fellow's ancestors into the ark among the more re- 
spectable animals, especially those which were suscepti- 
ble to starding impressions, and w^ere in a delicate condi- 
tion of physical health. 

Speaking of the ark and its live-stock of birds and 
beasts and less agreeable creations one is constrained to 
admit that it is very difficult to resist the impulse to 
seem learned in the natural history of the horse. It is 
as good as any other piece of hypocrisy to see a man 
who does not know whether a horse of full age ought to 
have eight or eighty teeth, elbow his way through a 
crowed of idlers who have gathered about a racy-looking 
horse, take him by the upper-lip and lower-jaw, open his 
mouth and give a quick, knowing glance at it and turn 
quietly away, pretending not to be aware that the crowd 
is looking expectantly at him, and then begin to stare at 
the beast and whistle! ''How old is he, Bardiolomew?" 
asks some one who affects interest in horses. " Ask 
Pete," says Bart, with a knowing laugh, and then slides 
off for fear of being cornered. Another amateur, hav- 



140 THE CIRCUS. 



n 



ing looked in the animal's mouth, ventures that worm- 
eaten old evasion, '' Guess he's old enough to vote !" All 
this while, the patient creature, modest and decorous in 
his equine strength, is listening in silent contempt to 
wiseacre talk about his knees, his back, the set of his 
shoulders, and other impertinences ; and conscious of his 
own superiority to the whole assortment of gaping critics, 
healthy, virtuous and happy, his withers are unwrung ! 
But a comely horse is always an attraction, and a thing 
of joy forever. 




SOMETHING CRITICAL. 




SOMETHING CRITICAL. 

HTHIS patient and amiable, yea, not uncharitable No- 
tary, is fain to confess that there are some things 
which awaken his latent fires and set him aglow with feel- 
ings which doubtless owe their origin to the sinful side of 
our first parent. This warmth of feeling is not anger, 
although it is like to find expression in immoderate and 
impatient utterance ; for it is to be explained that it is his 
critical and analytical sensibilities which this Querist thus 
admits to be subject to occasional irritations. We find 
going the rounds of the press a quotation from an article 
in Appleton's Journal, written by Mr. William H. Ride- 
ing, of the Wheeler Expedition. He attempted a de- 
scription of *^ Yank," the celebrity of Tallac Point. We 
find this writer quoted as follows : " There are settle- 
ments at the Springs (Gilmore Soda Springs) and at the 
steamboat landing, including at the latter place the hos- 
telry of " Yank " Clements, a celebrity in the neighbor- 
hood, who is the original of Clarence King's clever sketch 
of '-The Newty's of Pike." Now, it is to be objected to 
the foregoing, in the interest of the strictly truthful, that 
there is not any sort of '' settlements at Gilmore Springs " 



144 SOMETHING CRITICAL. 

— not even as much as a log cabin or a brush shanty 
within a mile of them, and if Mr. Clarence King took 
Yank for a pattern or subject for a Pike county picture, 
he made as wide a miss of his mark as if he had painted a 
sketch of a telegraph pole and dubbed it a Cedar of Leb- 
anon. Clements is a man of sixty, who came west when 
he was more than forty years of age, from New Hamp- 
shire, and so pronounced is his character of a specimen 
rustical New Englander, that he got his nickname of 
*^ Yank" as by common consent. We find Mr. Rideing 
expressing himself as follows : " 'Yank ' emigrated from 
the Green Mountains to Nevada when Lake Tahoe was 
scarcely more familiar to geographers than the Victoria 
Nyanza, and delights in recounting to visitors his early ex- 
perience, which he does with many amusing peculiarities 
of phrase and gesture. 'I civilized the Indians, sir; yesr 
sir, and taught them Christianity! When I came here, 
sir, a man's hfe wasn't worth shucks, sir ; when they 
didn't kill, they stole, the dog-gorned cusses ! I 
taught them to be honest, sir ; the first son-of-a-gun I 
found stealing, sir, I tied up to a tree and whipped like 
— ! Yes, sir ! ' With tremendous volubility he delivers 
each sentence, and then draws back with arched eyebrows 
to observe the effect on the hearer. He is a man of great 
foresight and prodigious plans. He took me by the arm 
one day, and pointed mysteriously to a giant pine tree in 
front of the house. ' See that, sir ? I'm going to build 
a grotto in them highest branches ; outlook on the lake, 
sir ! A fish-pond, with a little Coopid jerkin' water down 



SOMETHING CRITICAL. 1 45 

here ; a billiard table and a pe-an-er in the house. I don't 
fancy pe-an-ers much ; there's too much tum-tum about 
'em. Give me a fiddle ; but we're going to have one — 
yes, sir ! Nicest place on the lake, sir ! ' He in- 
variably winds up with this declaration, and no one can 
go far astray in acquiescing." This might be a good deal 
worse, but it has blemishes which no observant writer can 
be excused for being guilty of The effort (and it is that, as 
much as anything of which we complain) is to dish up a 
Westerner and his eccentricities for the entertainment of 
the Eastern reader. Now, *' Yank " is no more a West- 
erner than a Massachusetts carpetbagger who happens to 
find himself transplanted from his native village into the 
center of South Carolina is a " Southron." Here we find 
a mature Yankee employing a class of words and exple- 
tives which are as foreign to his small vocabulary as Hin- 
dostanee or pure Italian. ^^ Shucks " is of the lingo of 
the West and Southwest; and Yank is no more capable 
of saying " dog-goned " than he is of comprehending 
Carlyle's Sartor Resartus or Andrew Jackson Davis's 
Great Harmonica. Adults of the class of men to which 
Yank belongs are unimpressible and never assimilate 
their patois to any near surroundings. A Yankee dwells 
forever on the opposite side of a fathomless gulf from a 
native of the Pike County region. They are different of 
breed, different in temperament, and as widely unlike in 
their employment of provincialisms as an Irishman and a 
Cockney. It is in the observance of the delicate but de- 
ciding shades of difference in speech between natives of 



146 SOMETHING CRITICAL. 

different parts of Ireland that Dion Boucicault succeeds 
so admirably in depicting the diverse types of Irish char- 
acter. Before his time there was the stereotyped Stage 
Paddy, just as there was a Stage Yankee before "Solon 
Shingle's '' day. We will not assert that both these were 
impossible characters, although it has always seemed to 
u» that the traditional Stage Yankee was a lamentably in- 
artistic and melancholy caricature. At all events, no-' 
body ever saw such a person in real, actual, sober life. 
As to the distinctive character and language of a typical 
Westerner, of the Pike County stamp, we have never 
seen him as much as attempted on the stage. To be 
sure, there is, in the blood and thunder play of the Jib- 
benainosay, a Roaring Ralph, with his fantastic grimaces 
and his *• angeliferous marm;" but the character is no- 
thing ever seen of men either on the earth or in the 
waters under the earth. It was born of the lesser stage, 
and is intrinsically stci generis. Yank, as we have inti- 
mated, is not even a Pacific Coast Pioneer. He came 
into Lake Valley, or, rather, he took charge of the stage 
station at his old place on the Placerville road, in 1859 
or i860, at the instance of Chorpenning. Prior to that 
time he had been a little while in Cuba, overseeing a 
cooper shop or some such industry, and was, as he con- 
tinues to be, an unmistakable specimen of the genus Yan- 
kee from the granite hills of New Hampshire. And yet 
we find him described in a leading periodical as if he 
were a half-cracked Missourian, expressing himself like a 
border ruffian, and in all respects different from any 



SOMETHING CRITICAL. I47 

Yankee ever seen at home or abroad. The New Eng- 
land provinciahsms are uncouth and grating, harsh and 
offensively coarse to sensitive ears ; but they are as dis- 
tinct from the provincialisms of the West and Southwest 
as the cawing of a crow is different from the chatter of a 
magpie. We believe it to be essential that in all writings 
these shades and inflections, localisms and small but de- 
cided contrasts should be taken into account. " The 
large brown tree " of the old landscape painters, detected 
and exposed by Ruskin, was a product of an age in art 
when any picture of a tree was accepted as a representa- 
tive of arboreous nature, generally. More modern art, 
better enlightened, demands that when a tree is repre- 
sented it shall stand for one or another of the many ge- 
nera or species of trees known to the woodman and the 
botanist. Glittering generalities are no longer admissible. 
Criticism has banished them. An equally just and ex- 
acting criticism should be leveled at the slipshod style 
in descriptive writing. Just as Boucicault has portrayed 
in his Irish characters so should it be carefully set forth 
in all attempts to illustrate American character. There 
are Americans and Americans ; and tho' they be rated as 
of the common social level of "" Yanks " and " Pikes," 
they are as different in texture, in looks, in language and 
in the fashion of their pronunciation as a Dublin-man is 
from a Far-downer, or a Canuck Frenchman from a cul- 
tured native of Paris. We even detect, occasionally, in 
the highly artistic workmanship of Bret Harte and Mark 
Twain evidences of this careless treatment, this use of the 



148 A BIT OF LOCAL COLOR. 



n 



stock-phrases of the professional comic writers, regardless 
of their strict and technical application. 



A Bit of Local Color. — Year by year our landscape 
freshens and becomes more habitable and human-like. 
In the beautiful park which surrounds the Soldiers' Home 
at Washington is a bit of leafy outlook which they call 
*^ The Vista." They have so skillfully trimmed away a 
space, about eye-sight high, through the thick trees, that 
by looking straight ahead you get a glimpse of the Capi- 
tol, far away, at the other end of a prolonged tube of 
foliage. The effect is very pleasing and picture-like. 
Now, here in Carson, the leaves and branches are so thick 
in places that one may cheat himself into a pleasant fancy 
of green and wooded slopes and grassy vales, beyond. 
We have managed to hide here and there, the bleak hills 
and sere brown mountains of the distant horizon and the 
middleground. Standing near the upper terrace and 
looking through the shade and orchard trees (which are 
really quite abundant), and taking in the view, Southward, 
the illusion, as of a country of gentle slopes and wide- 
stretching woodland is very welcome and almost decep- 
tive. And these damp mornings make the grass seem 
dewy. But, we fancy, these impressions hold their own, 
these chilly days, with much more strength by the warmth 
of an indoor fire than alfresco. Yon snow-crested Sierra 
chills the genials all out of us, and, shivering, we sigh for 
a moie summer-Hke and less capricious clime. Every 



AN ANCIENT CLAM. 1 49 

year brings us some new visitors of the feathered tribes. 
Here is a Httle fellow making himself very familiar with 
the leaves and twigs of a certain pear tree. He is of the 
size of a canary, and quite as yellow of plumage. They 
say he is a singer. We have seen him before now, but 
cannot recollect meeting him in these once birdless wilds. 
The trees we plant, much more than pay for themselves 
in the company they bring us. Very soon the orioles 
will begin the building of their hanging nests. 



An Ancient Clam. — If the early Washoes, or the pro- 
genitors of the Washoe tribe were of a festive nature, as 
is quite probable they were, they certainly had opportu- 
nities for indulging in, if they did not enjoy, the juicy 
delicacies of the modern clam-bake. Everybody knows 
that there is a sand-stone quarry at the Penitentiary. 
Yesterday we saw a fragment of that stone within which 
was embedded an unmistakable specimen of that pecu- 
liar bivalve known as the soft-shell clam. Clams being 
proverbially silent, of course this one tells no tales either 
of its origin or age; but that it is a pioneer of the first water 
there needs come no ghost from the grave to tell us. 
When this was a great inland sea, with the ichthyosaurus 
reposing in silurian mud, lured to his sleep by the dulcet 
music of the Dodo ; when the pliocene raven croaked 
love-songs to its mate in happy thoughtlessness of the 
coming day when the sage-brush should breed crows for 
Democratic diet ; when the Tufa was yet unknown to an 



150 AN ANCIENT CLAM. 



incipient geology and the carboniferous and the old red 
sandstone eras were yet unborn of the womb of time, 
then was this silent clam, thinking as clams think, moved 
by the motions which undulate through the soft and 
oozy cerebral structure of that terebratulate mollusk 
ruminating upon the cares and joys, hopes and ambi- 
tions, present and future of clamdom as then it existed 
within the muddy confines of its moist and mushy but 
yet innocent and happy home. Were there conventions 
where clams did congregate, with and without proxies, 
then, we wonder? Did the unscrupulous clam bulldose 
or otherwise discomfit or betowsel the trusting and con- 
fiding clammy aspirant, then ? In those days was clam 
arrayed against clam ; and did the hard-shells wage war 
against the soft-shells, and the soft-shells conspire in cau- 
cus against the hards ? Had our fossil friend here ever 
been defeated at the primaries ; or was he the successful 
manipulator, in his weak and viscid way, of delegations 
pledged and unpledged, proxies, substitutes and alter- 
nates ! And was he happy at high water, this ancient 
clam ; and did he revel in his inscrutable way at the 
thought of party triumphs, and jolly doings done in the 
name of ratification, endorsement and things of breezy 
political vicissitude ? The impatient printer, hungry for 
copy, interrupts our cogitations and is clamorous. We 
are growing flustered and tempted toward the demoraliz- 
ing lands of puns, and must give o'er. 



1 



ST. VALENTINES DAY. 151 

St. Valentine's Day. — To-day is the day when all 
true lovers of the bird family mate; when all true lovers 
who are not birds (but one sweet half of whom have an- 
gel's wings), sigh for one another ; when every ass brays 
at every other ass (in metaphor), by means of a very 
" coarse and vulgar missive ; and when Parthenia sits on 
Ingomar's tiger-skin covered lap and sighs of 

Two souls with but a single thought, 
Two hearts that beat as one. 

And, moreover, there's love to be made in a snow- 
drift, maugre the cold and the wind and the shrewdly 
biting air. Even the North Pole is not too chilly for 
these ardent and amorous episodes. The Esquimaux have 
blubbering and blubber-eating httle boys and girls ; the 
Polar bear frolics with her cubs, playing hide-and-seek 
among the corners and in and out of the nooks and cran- 
nies of the icebergs ; and there are demonstrations of 
endearment even among the whales the walruses and the 
fur-bearing seals. These, stimulated and encouraged by 
the kindly genius of the good god whD presides over 
these times and seasons of love-making, and reminded 
thereof by the more modern exponent of that blessed 
but none-the-less heathen deity, St. Valentine, are as 
warm under their furs and fat as we under the glow of 
our stoves, the heat of our furnaces or the stimulation of 
exaggerated nature and distorted art. There is a history 
of St. Valentine. It dates back and forth in an absurd 
way, from the magnificent days of Mythology to the hard 
headed years of Puritanism. But Love burns as hot and 



152 THE LOCUST AS AN ARTICLE OF DIET. 

sweet now as it did when men worshiped Juno and were 
not averse to the rather loud sparkings which took place 
between Mistress Venus and her many Pagan lovers ! 
As t3 Dan Cupid, he still lives ! We are very glad to 
believe that he will survive ail mere forms of religion, 
fashion, morals and politics, and be Dan Cupid still, with 
never an arrow lost, never any elasticity gone from his 
golden bow, never a feather moulted from his wings ! Let 
him live as in the halcyon days when under his ministra- 
tions Venus was led that way into the charmed wood 
where lay Adonis, wounded unto death ; and even now 
as then let lovely woman charm and be charmed. Was 
it not the good St. Valentine who lent the inspiration to 
Will. Shakspeare, when, writing of the encounter between 
the queen of love and the young boar-hunter, he told us 
of their meeting : 

*' Full gently now she takes him by the hand, 
A lily prisoned in a jail of snow, 
Or ivory in an alabaster hand." 



The Locust as an Article of Diet. — The report 
that the Washoe Indians were suspiciously absent proves 
to have been the shallowest of rumors. The Biscuit and 
not the Bannock is what tempts these iDrds of the locust 
and mighty men of the grub-worm and grasshopper. 
They still linger within reach of the funeral baked meats, 
still come with stealthy tread upon the startled kitchen- 
maid, still press the cold nose of aboriginal mendicity 



THE LOCUST AS AN ARTICLE OF DIET. 1 53 

upon the window panes of the pale-face's cook-room. 
Not any of the smell of villainous saltpetre burning 
upon the smoking flanks of reeking armies for them. 
Rather do they prefer the peaceful acts of the poker 
game and the wild excitements of lucky-stick. ^' What 
makes all Indian babies so chubby ?" queried a man of 
curious mind, yesterday. Abundant nutriment from the 
maternal fount, my friend. That's what makes babies fat 
and healthy and chubby-cheeked. Did you never eat 
one of those black, beetle-headed locusts of which the 
Indians are so fond and on which John (wasn't it John 
or was it Pharaoh ?) fed for so long ? We have partaken 
of this crisp delicacy; and we pronounce them good. 
They have a mild, nutty taste — more of the flavor of a 
beech-nut than anything else. Don't be squeamish. 
Meeting a locust-gathering squaw with a quantum of 
these insects in her possession, ask her the favor of a 
taste of her favorite food. Crunch it and swallow it like 
a man, and our word for it you will agree with us that it 
is good. 




RANDOM SHOTS. 



1 



RANDOM SHOTS. 



JJI OUSEFLIES are your only true cosmopolites. They 
are the same in every clime, in every altitude, in 
every condition of life. And yet, with all our familiarity 
with these universal insects we know but precious little 
about them. How many of us have ever seen a fly's nest 
or her eggs or her young? A ship may land in a harbor 
after a flyless voyage over winter seas and yet she finds 
herself swarming with flies as soon as she is hauled up 
into the dock. And yet nobody has ever seen them fly in 
swarms. Every boy has seen a caterpillar turn into a 
chrysalis and a chrysalis into a butterfly; but who has 
ever seen the birth of one of these myriad associates of 
humanity whose tribe we have known as long as we 
have known our hands or our ears or our sometimes 
sensitive noses? But now as the nights are become 
cooler and the midday sun is hotter, Mr. Fly renews his 
acquaintance with a persistence worthy of a poor relation 
or a book agent. But for the regular attentions and un- 
remitting visits of a quartette or two of these familiars, 
these N's and Q's might meander on indefinitely and 
never, never end ! 



158 RANDOM SHOTS. 

Mars, the planet of war and warriors, has been in oppo- 
sition with the sun, lately, we believe. (Our astronomy 
is of the speculative and inexact sort, it will be seen. It 
is like our playing on the violin — we know something of 
the principle, but we are in indifferent practice.) We 
observed last evening that it was in opposition, in the 
gloaming, to a right new slip of a moon, — a wee bit cres- 
cent just faintly discernible. Thus does sweet Hecate, 
her soul all given to peace, look with beseeching eyes 
upon that fiery star, praying for a cessation of his riotous 
reign along the hills and strong towns of the Danube. 
But Mars reddens his bold front and lighting anew his 
fires snubs our pale satellite and tells her to her sorrowful 
face that peace is all moonshine^and the impudent star 
seems to have the right of it. At all events, the mothers 
who read with anxious eyes the red returns from the war 
which rages between the Russians and the Turks are only 
too conscious that peace is very far from where their sons 
are struggling. 

We know not what a day or a step or a whimsy may 
bring us to ; and we get reminders, occasionally, of that 
good domine in the Deserted Village of whose preaching 
the poet says — 

And those who came to scoff remained to pray. 

Somebody ought to invent a contrasting line whose pur- 
port should be that those who came to be preached at 
remained to be entertained with the gleesome carols of the 
choir, the tinted sunshine streaming thro' the chancel 




RANDOM SHOTS. 1 59 

windows and the pleasant shapes and tasteful trimmmgs 
of bonnets and dresses and scarfs. 

Now and then a tramp is to be seen at one's back door, 
footsore, red of nose (from sun burn), and with an appe- 
tite fit for a clam-bake or a funeral feast. Some of these 
carry about with them a look of honesty, and seem to 
take to the ways of beggary with a bad grace and as a last 
resort. The better appearing ones ask for work — a sort 
of grace before meat; but the majority are better at a 
cold joint and a stout dish of potatoes than at any wood- 
pile. (All this parenthetically. We have a healthy look- 
ing mendicant in our mind's eye— a fellow with not a bad 
face and much modesty of demeanor, but a most famine 
breeding appetite.) Indeed, seeing these vagabonds eat 
and knowing the cause of their eagerness for food sug- 
gests the advice to dyspeptics and weak-stomach folk to 
break up all trivial, fond records and take to the road and 
the kitchen doors of private dwellings. The ploddings 
of an outcast are a rare sauce for the occasional meal. 
Then, why not, oh debilitated fellow citizen, cut loose 
from your base of supplies, make your headquarters 
where your shoes may lead you, and start out for adven- 
tures, trampings and a hungry maw? 

Now come with me to reprehend the stupid man or 
boy, who, having peeled his orange or his apple or his 
banana, deposits the skin on the sidewalk for some honest 
father with a Uterary mission to wrench his anatomy withal. 



l6o RANDOM SHOTS. 



1 



For in this sort of deposit is there danger to the up-headed 
pedestrian ; and a sudden sitting down upon the unswept 
walk is not conducive to morals or the integrity of one's 
pantaloons. Throw your peelings in the street, good 
friend ; or, what's better, wrap them carefully in a paper 
and take them home for a treat to your pet pig. 

The judicious observer has long since detected the fact 
that there are some pleasant effects even in the more 
sombre hues ; and there is abundant life away from the 
glitter and sparkle and strong reflections and lights and 
shadows of the sunshine. Better a light burden of timely 
seriousness than o'er-strained effort in the other direction. 
There is nothing so melancholy as uncorked fun with the 
bead all gone. When it ceases to bubble and has become 
stale it had better go with the rinsings. 

'' The cause of education," remarked Mr. Owlhead, as 
he adjusted his glasses and braced himself sidewise by 
spraddling apart his feet ; '' the cause of education is a 
most tremendous engine in the fabric of Christian devel- 
opment. It teaches, sir, that two and two is four ! It 
lets us know where Mesopotamia is ! It instructs us in 
the stars, and gives us an insight into the parts of speech. 
It conveys to the youthful mind the possibilities of its 
existence, and develops the deestrick ! " Now, revolving 
with calmness and a certain imperfect sort of philosophy 
these crude notions of Mr. Owlhead, we cannot escape 
the conviction that in one material respect he is right. 



RANDOM SHOTS. l6l 

Education does '' develop the deestrick." That is to say, 
it waters the waste places from whence our boys and girls 
look up with hopeful eyes for the comforts of the nursery 
of knowledge. There are some minds whose construction 
is ignored by the self-elected censors who, like an ideal 
Chinese Empire, assume to have arrived at the full per- 
fectibility of human knowledge. These repudiate with 
scorn, the unfortunates who do not relish the milk-diet of 
a primary education — as education is ladled out in the 
schoolhouses. They leave out their calculations, and 
therefore ignore, the lads who cannot learn what they can- 
not see and understand. These are the non-receptives. 
They somehow cannot think or learn by rule. There is 
a large knowledge comes to them through wide-eyed ob- 
servation, however, and they know something of nature, 
and much of natural objects; and when Pale-face, yonder, 
with an easy grasp of bookish knowledge cannot tell a 
mule from a four-miler, they can pick you out from 
among a hundred passing roadsters an old acquaintance 
of a colt whose bare back they used to stride and ride. 

We note another new book with a catch-penny title : 
My Mother-in-Law. This legend is printed in great big 
black letters kitty-cornered of the cover. We wouldn't 
read that book if we were the Prisoner of Chillon, and 
could not possibly get another bit of print to read ! Ad- 
mirable literature does not employ or justify such quack- 
eries and charlatanry. Believe us, children, good books, 
conveying the words of wisdom and the precepts of cor- 



1 62 THE DRV ROT. 

rect morals ; books whose wit is sterling and not brumma- 
gim ; books that will last through this generation to be 
admired by the next ; books without which no library is 
perfect, do not appear before the book-buyers of this world 
either in masquerade or fantastic attire, and certainly not 
in the garb of the vulgar and the coarse-minded. 



The Drv Rot.— This Collator confesses that he likes 
a chat with Sir Roderick Random, or Sir Roger de Cov- 
erley, better than to encounter the severe dogmatism of 
Sir Anthony Absolute or the fiery and explosive presence 
of Sir Lucius O'Trigger. The uses of this world enhance, 
in the mind of the observer, the value as well as the 
sweetness of peace. Repose awakens the domestic vir- 
tues, calms the passions, opens the mind for the reception 
of wisdom, and enables us to estimate at their true value 
the gentler and less showy phases of this life. While it 
is true that man cannot live on bread alone, yet it is still 
as true as any maxim may be that it is the staff of life. It 
is after the storm that we experience the joys of the peace- 
ful calm. We believe that communities, like individual 
men, have their boisterous and unruly times of life, and 
that if they possess the better elements underlying the 
strata which form their character, they will outgrow their 
unseemly habits and sow their wild oats. We who are 
given o'er occasionally to the croaks and the grumbles, 
and who regret the good old days of the Pioneers' need, 
for our soul's repose, to analyze the Past and examine 



THE DRY ROT. 1 63 

what it was made of. It is easy to fall into the ways of 
sentimentahty and seek expression in what Justin Mc- 
Carthy calls splendiferous rubbish. Let us beware of com- 
mitting the thoughts of us to bathos and pickling our past 
in vain repinings. The dry-rot is always a near danger 
and it should be kept off by frequent brushings and 
cleansings and dustings. 

'' A very curious disease, the dry-rot in men," says 
Dickens, '^and difficult to detect the meaning of. It had 
carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the King's Bench 
prison, and it had carried him out, feet foremost. He 
was a likely man to bok at, in the prime of life, well to do, 
as clever as he needed to be, and popular among many 
friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and 
pretty children. But like some fair-looking houses or 
fair-looking ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first 
strong exte^ial revelation of the Dry Rot in men is 
a tendency to lurk and lounge ; to be at street corners 
without intelligible reason ; to be going anywhere when 
met ; to be about many places rather than at any ; to 
do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of per- 
forming a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the 
day after. When this manifestation of the disease is ob- 
served, the observer will usually connect with a vague 
impression at once formed and received, that the patient 
is living a little too hard. He will scarcely have had 
leisure to turn it over in his mind, and form the terrible 
suspicion of ' Dry Rot,' when he will notice a change for 
the worse in the patient's appearance, — a certain slovenli- 



164 



THE DRY ROT. 



ness and deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor 
intoxication, nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this 
succeeds a smell of strong waters, in the morning ; to that, 
a looseness respecting money ; to that, a stronger smell 
as of strong waters, at all times ; to that, a looseness re- 
specting everything ; to that, a trembling of the limbs, 
misery and crumbling to pieces. At it is in wood, so it 
is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound usury quite 
incalculable. A plank is found infected with it and the 
whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been wdth the 
unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small sub- 
scription. Those who knew him had not nigh done say- 
ing, ' So well off, so comfortably established, with such 
hope before him — and yet it is feared, with a shght touch 
of the Dry Rot !' when lo 1 the man is all Dry Rot and 
dust.'' Friends, Countrymen and Lovers, speak gently 
to one another and to yourselves, asking the^question. If 
there be any ins:;ances of the Dry Rot in this pure atmos- 
phere of a vale lying under the shadow of the snow- 
peaked Sierra? BlU let us be honest and faithful and 
cheery : for to be otherwise is to fall into the paths of de- 
moralization and mold and ashes. 




SCRAPS. 



d 



SCRAPS. 

T T is fun to see a big girl play ball. She is conspicu- 
ously interesting at the bat. The bat is generally a 
great big board ; and she holds it up with both hands ; 
and when she sees the ball a-coming she just fires the bat 
at it with all her might and then runs as if she were afraid 
a cow were going to toss her over the first fence. When 
she is ^'in " as catcher she never catches the ball. When 
it is tossed toward her she puts both hands over her 
eyes, screams a little scary scream and catches the ball 
on her stomach. Then when she breaks for a base she 
always goes in the wrong direction and fetches up on 
the opposite side to that to which she ought to go. But 
she enjoys the fun, all the same, and is a good deal bet- 
ter than nobody to fill up a short '^ nine.'' 



We observe with a sense of admiration which resem- 
bles envy as the mist resembles rain, the Washoe Indian's 
enjoyment of this balmy June weather. The buck abo- 
rigine takes more solid comfort than the female of his 
tribe. Here and again the latter is found with a huge 
burden of green tules, freshly cut, on her back. This is 
her Spring poplin ; her rose-wood cradle ; her marble-top 



1 68 SCRAPS. 

bureau ; her cambric shams with Cluny lace insertion. 
But Mr. Buck, with true mascuHne indifference to domes- 
tic affairs, forgetting that '^ men must work and women 
must weep," lays him down upon the sun-warmed earth, 
upon the grass, upon the side-walk, anywhere in the in- 
viting air, prone upon his broad and manly stomach and 
sleeps away the cares which infest the day. Now and 
then a group may be seen taking in the mild fascinations 
of willow-stick monte ; but the preference is given to na- 
ture's sweet restorer, balmy sleep. Such may not be as 
ennobling an occupation as tending the flocks which 
bleat for more copy ; but if we are not in candor bound 
to confess that there are moments when the weariness 
imposed by the gristless treadmill makes one look with 
complacency at these happy, healthy vagabonds, then is 
there no truth in the editorial chair. 

We love to contemplate the happy, fawn-like innocence 
of gleeful childhood, but if one likes to turn and see 
what the merry feet of playful lads and lasses can do, 
how they stretch afar toward the responsibilities of man- 
hood and womanhood ; how they tread the earlier path- 
way which leads to life's cares and hopes and joys ; how, 
under their lightsome tread and their dancing feet, all 
that is wearisome and perplexing passes in a moment and 
is laughed away — let him go and look at the District 
Schoolyard! It is as barren as a brick-kiln; as grass- 
less as a bowhng-alley ; and sterile as an idiot's mind ! 
That is what the pattering feet of happy childhood can 



SCRAPS. 169 

do. The fond, contemplative poet who entertains the 
hallucination that these artless, kid-like skippings, so an- 
nihilating to all green things do not cost many a hard- 
earned dollar in shoe money, is an idle dreamer, at an 
idle sky. 

When we were at the Warm Springs a few days ago 
we were told a pathetic story by a little boy of the death 
of his rabbits. They had fallen victims to the cruelty 
and rapacity of a certain unprincipled dog that belongs 
to the Prison, close by. Never a happier rabbit family 
than this until that murderous dog made a Ku-klux of 
himself and ended in blood their innocent career. (The 
maternal prospects of the elder member of the family 
made the case all the more painful, but we won't enlarge 
too fully.) And this leads us to these historical retro- 
specdons anent the always interesting subject of the 
keeping of pets. A writer in a late number of Chamber's 
Journal reminds us that Cardinal Wolsey was on familiar 
terms with a venerable carp ; that Cowper played with 
rabbits, and that Lord Clive owned a pet tortoise. This 
same writer notes the fact that Sir John Lubbock tamed 
and won the affections of a Syrian wasp. Some trust- 
ful spinsters — -three sisters — moved by the sweet senti- 
mentality of the thing, undertook to make pets of as 
many English wasps. " Before a week was out one fair 
experimentalist wore a large blue patch over her left eye.; 
another carried her right arm in a sling ; and the third 
was altogether lost to the sight of anxious friends." 



lyo SCRAPS. 

Another lady was more lucky with her pet butterflies un- 
til a cruel rain storm overtook and drowned them in sight 
of their beloved mistress's boudoir. Wolves have been 
petted and tamed; and so have great ugly lizards. Cap- 
tain Burton, the famous traveler, had a numerous collec- 
tion of live stock at his headquarters in Syria. When he 
went away he left his pets in his wife's charge. She in- 
creased the collection. A pet leopard of her introduc- 
tion ate up the happy family, all but a white jackass ; 
and he behaved himself like the '^ dear gazelle" whose 
owner sang : 

He riled the dog, annoyed the cat, 
And scared the goldfinch into fits ; 

He butted through my newest hat, 
And tore my manuscript to bits ! 

The office cat of the Morning Appeal insisted upon 
being confined on the editorial desk ; comes and nurses 
her kittens on our exchanges, and makes a loafing place 
of the Unabridged Dictionary ! 

We should be prepared for the emergencies of the 
season. The season now about to burst upon us in the 
full tide of its seductiveness is the fruit season. Let us 
deal with it in all particulars in the very best available 
manner, avoiding, as far as possible, all mistakes. Now 
what makes people pronounce gooseberry goozebry? 
What has that rather aggressive and acidulous fruit done 
thus to be called out of its real name ? The school ex- 
aminations are coming on, and we beg to suggest the 



SCRAPS. 171 

propriety of a rigid scrutiny into the prevalent pronun- 
ciation of this word. Also we beg to propose these fol- 
lowing handy lines as a corrective to the too common 

error. 

The berry named with name of goose, 
Should have pronunciation loose. 
If soured and puckered into gooze, 
Much of its euphony we lose. 

What makes yellow roses? How did they come? When 
life was all a dream of future opulence in all the possibil- 
ities of the confectioner's art, and care had not yet come 
to mark its lines and dig its grooves, there were no yellow 
roses. They were all red and white. Then the only yel- 
low flowers were dandelions and pumpkin blossoms and 
buttercups and a certain sort of pond-lily that nobody 
ever picked because it was yellow and easy to get. Now 
every front yard and garden is aflame with yellow roses. 
We think there must be something wrong, some bilious 
disorder resulting in jaundice, in the phenomenon. In 
the romantic history of tuUp culture and tulipomania 
there has never been produced a blue tulip — or is a green 
one? (Possibly it is black.) We get mixed up and per- 
plexed in some of the more statistical parts of the science 
of natural history, like the dame with her blueing. It 
would either sink or swim, she said, when it was good, 
and she '' disremembered " which. But give us the red, 
red rose — the great giant of battle — with its blood-stained 
heart and the florid glories of its curving leaves ; or pluck 
for us, oh Maid of Athens, ere we part, the pure white 



172 SCRAPS. 

rose, gleaming in its spotless loveliness and scented 
with the delicate odors of a distillation which comes of 
honey dews and the milk of Paradise ; and let its immac- 
ulateness and its delicacy, rivaling the Lily of the Valley, 
its peerless structure and its incomparable wealth of 
bloom, console and reassure the yearning heart which 
shrinks from the glare of these colorings of a new, un- 
tender age ; and as we breathe these gentle fragrances let 
the lips be moistened and the grateful tongue be cooled 
and satisfied with a draught ^' cooled for long ages in the 
deep delved earth " — which dangerous spirit of rhapsody 
tempts us toward the realms where the merchant lieth in 
w^ait for perorational puffs, and the tradesman hopes for 
flattery. Lead us not into temptation ! 

'^ Yank," w^ho dwelleth beside the still waters of the 
Lake which is Bigler and not Tahoe, came into the city 
yesterday, smelling like a fisherman of Galilee, and big 
with tidings or a gold find. He informed the editorial 
head that there had recently been discovered on a little 
stream which empties into Falling Leaf Lake, among the 
red earth there, some rich gold diggings. B. D., he 
said, and some others, had gone there, prospecting. He 
said, further, that he was going to take a look at the new 
diggings himself Now, we understand something of the 
necessities of the age and hour. We know how hard the 
times are, and how much there is need of some develop- 
ments, and all that. But there has not yet arisen any 
necessity for the burning of our mahogany furniture, or 




SCRAPS. 173 

gold mirror frames, our pictures and our books. There 
is no need, yet, of consigning to the pawnbroker our 
lockets and wedding-rings, our keepsakes and our family 
Bibles. And so we hope they will find never a speck of 
gold in any stream whose laughing waters leap into that 
lake nor on any hillside or glen thereabout ; for we are 
not willing to contemplate the fair face of that loveliest of 
"sheets of mountain water stained and muddied with the 
turgid rinsings of flumes and rockers and sluices and 
long-toms. There it lies, as placid as a dew-drop and as 
pure as a maiden's heart, a priceless diamond set in the 
hollow of the mighty hills, a glad thing to the eye and a 
blessed calmness to the tired soul, above the value of any 
gold, above the considerations of money getting, above 
all sordidness and greed of gain. Then why should it be 
made a sink-hole, a puddle, an opaque pool? Lucky 
Baldwin owns the wooded lands lying contiguous. With 
a high consideration which bespeaks him a man and not 
a mere money bag, he has consecrated those forests and 
groves to their own perpetual beauty. He has declared 
they shall never be surrendered to the woodman's ax. 
He stands by Nature as her one firm, effectual friend 
So it is represented to this scrivener. We like to believe 
that this is as we have stated it. We hope he may also 
be willing and able to prevent any mining vandalisms 
which shall strip the sides of Falling Leaf Lake of its 
beauties and befoul its face and pollute its waters with 
the impurities of the sluice-box and the riffle. 



174 SCPAPS. 

That genial postman, D. O. A. is again visible to his 
many friends. He bears his years with a surprising apti- 
tude and solemnity. We are reminded by seeing him 
that in a less beautiful age they made postmasters of dif- 
ferent stuff ; men who looked less like a respectable post- 
age stamp than he ; men who had no sticky side for let- 
ters, as it were ; men who were of the stiff attributes of a 
post mortem ; gaunt and hungry men, who were late at 
their mails ; men who had been dropped and stamped 
and had no wafer to get along in this world. 

June is doing remarkably well for a young, unaccus- 
tomed month. It really takes on a summerish fashion as 
if it were used to the sage brush and had had long expe- 
rience of the rabbit-weed and grease-wood. We feel like 
offering it the welcome of an old-timer. We wish, invol- 
untarily, tha-t it might bring respite and calm to the tired 
and anxious who are in stocks ; but we are not disposed 
either to withhold the gratuitous meed of praise or visit it 
with any of the harsh possibihties of a malversation of the 
editorial office. Indeed, we think that June, considering 
its nonage and inexperience, should be treated with quite 
as much consideration as if it were as ripe as October or 
as virtuous as February. 

As the sun declined behind the shuddering Sierra on 
Sunday night, and when the glad quiet of a weak eyed 
twilight surrendered itself to the gloom of coming night, 
there arose upon the sobbing air a sound of bells, sum- 



SCRAPS. 175 

moning the just and unjust, the devout and the skeptical, 
the spendthrift and the usurer, the wide and the narrow, 
the good, the bad and the indifferent to the better places 
where prayers go up and where the creditor forgives the 
man who owes. But in the midst of their supplications 
were there any who remembered how easy it is to accu- 
mulate, little by little, little by little, here a week and 
there a week, the small indebtedness which grows about 
the leaves of the carrier's book ? 




FINDING MONEY IN THE ASHES. 



FINDING MONEY IN THE ASHES. 

'X/'ESTERD AY, being a rainy day, and the clouds being 
thick upon the face of the sky, and the carpenter 
having finished some long-needed book shelves, Senator 
Jones' car load of Pub. Docs, were husked of their buff 
colored wrappings and stood up in rows with their backs 
to the book-worm. There was some doubt about it. The 
works which come under the generic head of Patent 
Office Reports, grim in black bombazine, and oh ! so 
cheap and so common — ^are not the most seductive things 
with which to eke out a library. A good many people do 
not hesitate to say of such that their room is better than 
their company. Placing them upon shelves, in sober 
earnestness, is like coming home laden with a string of 
chubs when you went a-trouting. And if the truth must 
be told, those fat, black-backed tomes with their grim 
gilt titles are not of an inviting character to the general 
reader. But there are hidden beauties everywhere, as the 
naturalist knows so well. " Full many a flower is born to 
blush unseen," just because people are careless in their 
investigations and superficial if not supercilious in their 
forming of acquaintanceship. The most contemptuous 
estimate of a volume of " Reports " cannot but become 



l8o FINDING MONEY IN THE ASHES. 



1 



temporarily arrested under the sense of suddenly awak- 
ened interest caused by such an odd bit of information 
as is conveyed in the statement that " The New Jersey 
Indian was once a paleohthic man." It does not matter 
w^hat the context is. There stands the queer averment ; 
and naturally the question comes, ^' wonder if the Washoe 
and Piute can claim for their ancestors kinship with these 
paleolithicals ?" Don't be too inquisitive ; if you are a 
student of ethnology you know already what it is to be a 
paleolithic man. If you are not such a student you do 
not need to know. But there is one instance of finding 
money in the ashes. One begins, after a discovery like 
this to have a faint sense of respect even for a Report of 
the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. 
Also one is conscious of a fresh sense of wonderment for 
that strange land of New Jersey. Now, still searching 
in the unpromising ashes and not yet relinquishing this 
Report, we come to a page headed with the words, in capi- 
tals, Eulogy on Alexander Volta, by Arago. In that abso- 
lute listlessness which sometimes give way to a sense of 
awakened interest in spite of itself, we find ourselves read- 
ing these words of elementary information : ^' When amber 
is rubbed it immediately attracts light bodies, such as the 
down of feathers, fragments of straw, and sawdust. The- 
ophrastus, the Greek, and Pliny, the Roman, had both 
noticed this property, but attaching apparently no inter- 
est to it, treated it simply as an accident of form and 
color." >{i * If: ii From electron, the Greek for amber, 
is derived ' electricity,' a term applied originally to the 



F 



FINDING MONEY IN THE ASHES. 



' attractive property of rubbed bodies, but now to the cause 
of a great variety of effects and to all the details of a 
brilliant science." 

Now, sweethearts and lovers, learned and unlearned, do 
not turn up your noses at this small find in the ash-box ; 
for it is important enough, albeit it relates to the primals, 
to have been translated out of Arago's French by no less 
a famous hand than that of the late Professor Henry of 
the Smithsonian. Now go, my children, and ask the 
first telegraph operator you meet to explain to you the 
nature of the ^' Voltaic Pile," saying to him on the au- 
thority of the Morning Appeal that that electrical con- 
trivance owes its name to this same Alexander Volta, 
who was born at Como, in Italy, on the i8th of February, 
1745. Poking further into the ashes we find that George 
III. was in favor of lightning rods terminating with balls, 
^^ because Franklin, then his successful antagonist in po- 
litical questions of vast importance required they should 
terminate in points." Some further searching is a temp- 
tation difficult to resist ; but this will suffice, in this im- 
mediate direction. There be cobwebs growing on some 
of the older books which line these shelves, and to one 
who knows the uses of the microscope those gossamer 
fabrics might well be studied with enthusiasm and profit. 
Indeed, let us not deceive ourselves with appearances. 
Before the writer stands a copy, in octavo, of Sainte 
Beuve's '' English Traits." You know, the minute your 
eye rests on the attractive binding, that here is a book 
which is not to be disregarded by the ambitious reader ; 



I 



MOUNTAIN LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 



and yet this dingy Smithsonian Report contains some 
facts about FrankUn that are quite as interesting as any- 
thing said about the old philosopher by that eminent 
Frenchman, one of whose happiest essays deals with the 
wise and wary Benjamin. But we must desist from fur- 
ther searches at present. The future may bring forth 
other discoveries to reward the hand of patient research. 
Already those black backs with their titles all so devoid of 
the lines and scrolls and borders which make other and 
less worthy books so attractive begin to take on a value 
never had before. We won't promise, but it may so 
happen that they shall yet be overhauled again and again 
for the chispas of golded information lying hidden within 
their long-neglected covers. 



Mountain Lights and Shadows. — If you are im- 
pressible by colors and tones, tints and atmospheric 
phenomena you call to mind the sunset hues of those 
mountains in the East yonder. Of a clear, still, gloam- 
ing the Pine Nut Hills loom up into the golden ether 
aglow with such rosy lights and violet shadows as the 
painters whose skilled hands so often have portrayed the 
Tyrolean Alps like to imitate upon their canvases. You 
say to yourself these gloomy peaks are not the pleas- 
ant mountains I saw at sunset. If they are the same, 
indeed, then hath Nature taken upon herself the arts of 
the changling and the false colors of the coquette. You 
accuse her of "painting; " for you have caught her in her 



MOUNTAIN LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 1 83 

dishabille and without her rouge and her Bloom of Youth. 
But how do you know which is the rightful tinting for the 
face of yon hillsides to bear before your eyes ? Why may 
not the mountains have moods as well as any man or 
woman ? But in fact these grim peaks so black with the 
darkness of a dull October morn are not the same that 
you saw at the twilight. Where is the deep and jagged 
ravine so shaded with the royal purple of sundown ? It 
is gone. Where is that distinct peak which casts a 
shadow upon its fellows, giving us the strong and defi- 
nite outhnes of an independent, self-sustained mountain? 
Gone ! This is another wall reared against the horizon. 
There are two, yes, an infinite number of mountain ranges 
there — a number as infinite as the changes of the chang- 
ing sky — as changeable as the clouds. To be sure, sum- 
mer being cloudless, has a certain set of mountains for its 
landscape; but these must yield and be gone with Au- 
tumn, with Winter and with Spring. Yesterday we caught 
a glimpse of an old friend of ours that has been gone, 
God knows where, these ever-so-many months. He 
showed his head, dark and threatening as is his wont, 
high topping the crest of the Sierra there. Some veils 
of mist and changing storm clouds had revealed his out- 
lines. He has been away, with the white mountain hares, 
the snowy owls and the Pogonip, all Summer. He is as 
distinct from any mere summer mountain as if he were 
a snow storm or a Christmas Eve. Some w^eak philoso- 
pher will sneer at this Notary for a vagarist or a madman, 
perhaps. But where is any sanity or soberness of state- 



184 MOUNTAIN LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 

ment to be had if not in an account of the actual, the 
visible, and the present? Is there a peach-bloom tinted 
mountain in the East, this heavy Tuesday? Was there 
not such a mountain there last Sunday at the going down 
of the sun ? You swear to what you see, not what might 
have been or may be again. That black summit there, 
over against the western sky, capped with those frowning 
clouds, stands midway and above two sharply defined 
peaks, the two making a gorge and showing deep shadows 
and great gloomy precipices "which was not so before." 
The plain fact is, some migratory mountains, just from a 
summering at the North Pole or amid the surges of the 
Antarctic have come back again to their old haunts. You 
say, in your thoughtless way, that the lights and shades are 
so disposed as to bring out, in an unaccustomed relief 
those mountain outhnes. This, my dear Reader, is to jump 
at a conclusion. You are taking the unnecessary pains 
to build to suit yourself, the contour of your neighbor- 
ing acclivities. Why not take them as you find them? 

Is the old garden gate of your boyhood the gate that 
it used to be, seen through the eyes of long ago ? Are 
the eyes themselves, the same ? Look at that compla- 
cent matron, her form rounded to a womanly fulness, her 
silky brown hair tinged with silvery streaks and her man- 
ner so gentle and winning but so something formal, withal. 
Is that your sweetheart, Fanny, think you ? No Sir ! 
That motherly woman who meets you with so much of 
cordiality mixed with a wise reserve, is no more the Fanny 
of your boyhood than the glossy fabric of your wife's 



FRUGAL JOHN CHINAMAN. 1 85 

dress is a silk-worm. Fanny vanished forever one day 
when she wept you out of sight, and went away to school 
there to stay until she should be a woman. Also you went 
out of sight — her sight forever and ever. You who are 
so paternal and bewhiskered, what business have you to 
give yourself the airs of a boy of sixteen ? Am I to be 
told that my broadcloth is a sheep's fleece because it 
once was wool ? And if immortal man and beautified 
woman are persons who have come to take the place of 
a certain boy and girl who once played together and 
made love, why not these mountains, which are soulless 
and insentient, whose very looks is a thing of the caprice 
of the clouds and a freak of the sunshine, why may not 
these " keep and pass and turn again ?" 



Frugal John Chinaman. — We know of some dyspep- 
tical folk who lately took note, in a half idle way of the 
working and dieting of a brace of tough, whip-cord muscled 
Chinese wood-sawyers. These leather-skinned fellows 
took a contract to saw and split and pile in a shed a cer- 
tain quantity of stove wood, in a given time and for a 
stipulated price. They performed their contract with 
faithfulness, begging and receiving a third of a stick of 
wood at the end of their toil and getting their money. So 
much for a very plain bit of neutral-tinted history. Now 
as to something observable and worth pondering over : 
these twain wrought from about 9 o'clock in the morning 
until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. At the noontide one of 



1 86 FRUGAL JOHN CHINAMAN. 



them disappeared for a few moments, and when he re 
turned he brought with him a loaf of baker's bread. 
This loaf and some draughts of spring water constituted 
the midday meal of these swart workers. That was 
all. The elder one was a man who confessed to fifty-five 
years of age. He kept his saw going from morning till 
night with the regularity of a steam piston rod. He never 
seemed to get out of breath or to be at all fatigued. The 
other was a man of thirty, perhaps. He was very near 
being what one would call fat — that is to say, in first-rate 
physical condition. The work done, in the allotted time, 
was quite as much as any two strong men would be like 
to do ; that is to say, ample and something very like ex- 
peditious. Now what do we deduce ? A pinch-belly the- 
ory of frugality ? A starveling lesson of self-denial ? Not 
at all. We are not preaching ; and if we were we would 
never preach any doctrine whose practice should fill one's 
pockets at the expense of his healthful tastes for the best 
and wholesomest viands. This Notary is for having a 
good taste and a good swig, God wot I whenever it is at 
all wise and prudent to take it. But look at the remark- 
able temperance in the diet of those villains. A loaf of 
dry bread and a noggin of water when Darby and Joan 
must have a steaming joint, a peck of potatoes and a 
quarter ton or so of pie. And look at their reward? 
Health, strength, solid mpscles, wind like a hunter and a 
happy, cheery, patient, comfort-enjoying state of mind 
which no half- well man or woman ever enjoys. Tl e les- 
son, oh Gormandizers and untrained eaters is that we are 



3 



FRUGAL JOHN CHINAMAN. 187 

all in the habit of taking too much, too heavy, too rich 
and too frequent food. We keep our stomachs con- 
stantly tired. When that useful organ gets fatigued, in- 
stead of giving it a rest as we should our hands or feet, 
we dose it with physic or drench it with alcohol or do 
some other preposterous thing. Pride is as much to be 
charged with our dyspepsia and our consequent aches 
and pains as anything else. If we are not conscious of 
having just so many meals served per diem and with 
meats, meats, meats, always and with no intermission, we 
charge ourselves with being paupers and underliving. It 
is very easy to be foolish ; but it is very difficult to over- 
come the dyspepsia when once it gets its fangs fastened 
in our digestive machinery. The long livers and great 
workers eat lightly. Mahomet, who was between sixty 
and seventy when he died, lived mainly on dates and 
water. M. Adolph Thiers, the great French statesman, 
just dead, was a very sparing ea,ter. So is Victor Hugo. 
So was William Hazlitt. So was William Pitt. It may 
be no less fitting for us modestly to suggest an emulation 
of these Chinamen's temperance of diet than it would be 
to quote the well-justified words, '^ Go to the ant, thou 

sluggard " Old Cap'n Kelson, whose far travels and 

many voyages over the tossing seas and mto foreign ports 
have given him a large experience, tells us confidentially, 
^^Always toast your cheese, my boy. Raw cheese is like 
any other tough, raw thing, indigestible." There's some- 
thing in this, my Hstening friend. The next time you sit 
down to a lunch of bread and cheese, try a Welsh Rabbit. 



A WELSH RABBIT. 



n 



Here's a receipt for the simplest : Take a lump of cheese 
(the older the better, so it be not mouldy or pregnant of 
skippers) about the size of the squareish form made by 
your three fingers extended ; break it up in pieces, put 
it in a saucepan, along with a lump of butter the size 
of a walnut, and as the mass melts over a quick fire or 
chafing-dish, add English mustard, a trifle of cayenne 
pepper, and a dash of Worcestershire. When the mix- 
ture is of the consistency of corn-meal mush pour it over 
a nice, thick, generous slice of toasted home-made bread. 
Take this leisurely, blessing the gods, with a pint of good 
beer or ale served in pewter, and you will be beatified. 
Don't go to your desk too soon after lunch, but rest quiet 
for a gentle half hour, and you will be a wiser and a bet 
ter man. 




OUR GOOD TALKERS OF THE FAR WEST. 



OUR GOOD TALKERS OF THE FAR WEST. 



O PEAKING of getting an education, (not at any Dis- 
trict School, the discussion of whose system will 
keep if it is not soon renewed), there is something to be 
said by a future somebody who can observe closely and 
write cleverly, illustrating a certain fact which comes 
glimmering into the horizon that bounds the view of this 
Notary. We mean the weeding out of mere provincial- 
isms and the softening of one's patois by the constant 
influence of cosmopolitan experiences, the endless com- 
plications of a widely variant personal contact. Bret 
Harte has done all that a New Yorker could be expected 
to do in the way of placing in literature the supposative 
language of the Far West. As Burn's poems are to those 
who cannot always understand his words but are in con- 
stant sympathy with his sentiment, so of Harte. His 
poems, whether in verse or prose, are always delightsome, 
spite of the monotone of their ^Mingo." But he has done 
all that needs ever to be done to illustrate a certain jar- 
gon of the mining camps, gambling houses and barrooms 
of the Pacific States. He has worked out his own claim, 
let alone having made it barren for all future prospectors. 
Mark Twain, when he writes '* lin^jfo " writes his own. 



192 OUR GOOD TALKERS OF THE FAR WEST. 

He is funniest in his native Missourian. He knows it 
and sticks to it, like the very sagacious man that he is. 
But sooner or later your well-developed representative 
Pacific man will talk a better language than any Eastern 
bred man. Says the poet-sculptor, Story : 

Give me of every language, first my vigorous English, 
Stored with imported wealth, rich in its natural mines — 
Grand in its rhythmical cadence, simple for household employment- 
Worthy the poet's song, fit for the speech of a man. 

Not from one metal alone the perfected mirror is shapen, 
Not from one color is built the rainbow's aerial bridge, 
Instruments blended together yield the divinest of music, 
Out of myriad of flowers the sweetest of honey is drawn. 

Thou hast the sharp clean edge and the downright blow of the 

Saxon, 
Thou the majestical march and stately pomp of the Latin, 
Thou the euphonious swell, the rythmical roll of the Greek ; 
Thine is the elegant suavity caught from sonorous Italian, 
Thine the chivalric obeisance, the courteous grace of the Norman — 
Thine the Teutonic German's inborn gutteral strength. 

It is the virtue of our every day's inevitable association 
— of speech, thought, opinion, habit, taste, temper and 
view — that we are appreciating. Those of us who were 
born and reared in New England can recollect the time 
— we of middle age — when a German was a man, when 
met, to be stared at and questioned ; when a Jew was re- 
garded with something more than mere curiosity and with 
a keen sense of interest, as one whose race and religion 
were of the kindred of Moses and Samson and Solomon 



OUR GOOD TALKERS OF THE FAR WEST. 1 93 

and David and Jeptha and Ruth ; when a Spaniard or a 
Turk or a Russian was regarded as from wonderland ; 
and when the Fakir of Ava was not a clever Irishman, 
nor the Numidian Giant an overgrown Pottawattomie 
Chief who had been Barnumized ! We came here with 
our Yankeeisms strong upon us. Among the other things 
in our budget was a not small stock of vanity. , The New 
England world had worked its circumscribed self-con- 
sequence even into the most modest of us. Many of 
us made the constantly recurring error of mistaking what 
was not like our own to be wrong because of that dis- 
similarity. If we were lucky we got much of this pro- 
vincial narrowness rubbed off by something less severe 
or humiliating than the proverbial hard knocks. Else- 
wise we got the knocks. By and by some crudities of 
thought went the way of a good deal of inelegance of 
speech ; and there have been Yankees who have learned 
to swear with all the graceful volubility of a Mississippi 
steamboat captain. Meantime your more impressible 
Southerner became conscious of a desire to gradually 
drop, certain of his fashions of walk and conversation ; 
the New Yorker forsook his little lapses of pure English; 
the Westerner set his tongue and his table in a better and 
broader habit ; and even John Bull, Paddy and our en- 
thusiastic friends from the other side the St. Lawrence 
began to take part in the general assimilation and blend- 
ing. Many of us who got our full share of the rough 
camp days owe no little of our education to the bar- 
rooms where we went so often ; the gambling saloons 



194 OUR GOOD TALKERS OF THE FAR WEST. 



^ 



where we acquired what small knowledge we possess of 
the ways of the card-players ; the street scenes which 
embrace so much of the problem of human contact and 
the force of individual assertion. Maugre all the boy- 
ish pride of the claim, we are a race of people — we Pa- 
cific Coasters of the early immigration — peculiar in our- 
selves. These causes that we have hinted at have brought 
all this about. Such a people, freed from much that is 
essentially vulgar, because essentially local and narrow, 
must in time, speak a purer language than people with- 
out such experiences. By and by these latitudes and 
longitudes and altitudes will be the prescribed places for 
your student of philology from Yale or your Professor of 
English Literature at Harvard to come to learn the art of 
speaking correct and euphonious English ! Then there 
will be an exchange of commodities as it were. The 
conscientious teacher of belles lettres at Bowdoin will 
take up his residence during a term of years with some 
correct-speaking Nevada mule teamster, and in return for 
his lessons in literature, the children will teach him to 
talk with an agreeable grace and fluency and in a com- 
prehensive and generous vernacular ! Mark the poverty 
of expression of your average tourist ; observe his im- 
pressive greenness ; note how awkwardly he conveys his 
ideas of men and things. These reflect out of our Past 
the possibility of what our present would be, minus these 
scars. How careful then should be each one of us who 
holds any share of the attention of the reading public to 
observe a purity of style commensurate with the general 



SOME CHARMING VERSES. 195 

correctness of language as we find it self-shaped in pop- 
ular conversation. Can we blend letters and life, rescu- 
ing the one from pedantry and slang, and the other 
from vulgarity and grossness, these years of hardship 
and exile will not have been spent in vain, vain as may 
be proven our search for wealth or the Fountain of Per- 
petual Youth. We have faith in the creed of the survi- 
val of the Fittest; and if the leaven of vivacious cosmo- 
politanism here implanted is as full of the principle of 
life as it is fit to live, it will perfect itself year by year ; 
and being perfected, will spread abroad and work such 
reformations as shall gladden the senses of the critical 
and add yet another cadence to the swelling rythm of 
this grandest of all Languages, this magnificent com- 
posite, the poet's '^vigorous English." 



Some Charming Verses. — Herewith we present our 
Constant and Beloved Readers with two charming little 
verses which come to us in the New York Sun. We do 
not know who wrote them. They have a familiar sound, 
but the sunshine and clouds, air and calm of each suc- 
ceeding day are new tho' they seem so like old acquaint- 
ances. Possibly this little poem, which is entitled Autumn, 
is an original effort of Mr. Dana's or some one of his as- 
sociates. Here are the lines : 

The summer's breath is faint upon the hills, 
Her feet are weary in the vales and woods, 

And autumn with a drowsy incense fills 
The nooks and glades and leafy solitudes. 



196 EXPRESSIVE FOOTPRINTS. 

Soft on the grassy bank the sunshine sleeps ; 

The air a wealth of misty radiance holds ; 
Nature with dreamy eyes her vigil keeps 

And all the scene in pensive beauty folds. 

Lowell, (we think it is), has defined the classics to be 
that w^hich is of unquestioned universal acceptability : 
The stock work of literature and art. This little poem 
(none the less a full poem because there are but eight 
lines of it), has so universal an application as to entitle it 
to the name of classical, under a broad interpretation of 
Mr. Lowell's definition. Certainly it describes things 
here round-about as well as in the locality where it was 
written. 



Expressive Footprints. — Men's gaits are to be taken 
into the account of the wise observer w^ho sets about the 
task of writing an exact and exhaustive statement of hu- 
man traits and traces. Many years ago, George Lippard 
wrote an ingenious and audacious essay upon the character 
indicated in autographs. There was a good deal of truth 
mixed up with a good deal of the spice of malignity in his 
deductions and examples. We recollect that he plagued 
Tom Read, (the poet-artist), by producing a v/ood-cut fac 
simile of Tom's signature, (which w^as small and rather 
delicate), as an evidence that he, Read, was of an effemi- 
nate nature — which notwithstanding his sometime profli- 
gacies, was only too plainly apparent. Of course the ex- 
tent of interpretation given to these autographs by Lip- 
pard was absurd; for he treated them as if they were in- 



EXPRESSIVE FOOTPRINTS. 1 97 

fallible keys to the whole character of their owners. 
There is a vast degree of character in a gait. Men who 
are successful in carrying a load of dignity are almost 
always equally successful in sustaining an impressiveness 
of stride ; while it is quite as invariable that slip-shod 
men have a shuffling and slovenly gait. We once 
knew a man Avho seemed possessed at all hours of the 
day and night to seem jocose and to treat everything in 
life as if it were reprehensible ever to seem to be in earn- 
est. He had a sort of mock vehemence in his fashion 
of walking which at times came very near degenerating 
into a roller-skater's motion — something between a strad- 
dle and a stage strut, and all the while in the very spirit 
of mockery and burlesque. Since time first lighted the 
bejumbled fragments of Chaos, old maids have had a 
mincing gait ; bullies have swaggered ; and different 
nationalities have betrayed each itself in the manner of 
its walking. What native born Yankee ever walked like 
yon springy-paced Paddy as he lightly holds his way 
upon his good elastic pins ? Mark the stately stride of 
our friend from the Sacred Soil. No New Yorker ever 
walked in that fashion. Your abstracted descendant of 
the Mayflower walks plantigrade, as Thoreau did and as 
a certain willful Senator always does — spraddles out, as 
it were, and takes in all the space he can monopolize. 
The quick, nipping step of that clerk there is of his un- 
conscious loyalty to his class. They all walk in that 
fashion. There is the available pertness of a flippant 
utility in it. No tidy man, meanwhile, ever carries him- 



198 A SHORT TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 

self with slouchiness. Be erect and step off with an' 
habitual bearing of self-respect, my son, and so shall you ^ 
be regarded with favor by eyes whose attention were 
worth attractino^. 



A Short Temperance Lecture. — There is a com- 
munity of misfortune in this world. A touch of pain or 
a mark of defect, when all other signs and symbols fail, 
indicates the strong relationship between all men, no mat- 
ter what their color, or the width of the distance between 
the places of their birth. This Notary saw yesterday a 
Chinaman with a hare-lip. He never saw the like before 
in any native of the land of the tea-plant and silk-worm. 
Odd incidents and appearances like this find us recon- 
ciling ourselves to the theory of a common origin. 
Wasn't it St. Paul who said to some of his self-conceited 
hearers in the Orient that God had created of one kind 
or character or tendency all the people of the earth? 
We think we have never seen a deaf and dumb China- 
man or a hunchback or a six-fingered. But we doubt 
not there are such evidences of suffering, misfortune and 
deformity. Also we have never yet seen a drunken 
Chinaman. This would seem, more than anything else, 
to justify the widening of the gulf between John and his 
critics. '^ Man being a reasoning creature" — you know the 
rest of what Byron said. But if certain windy crusaders we 
wot of, who, when they are not pouring their small, imper- 
tinent vials of dilute eloquence upon the inflamed and an- 



A SHORT TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 1 99 

gry head of John Barleycorn, are inveighing againt John 
Chinaman, would but calmly and judiciously and justly 
recognize him as an admirable exemplar of temperance, 
fortitude and industry, the cause of cold water would 
come into court with a cleaner showing than now it has. 
Whiskey is bad, very bad ; but it is not much worse than 
water which is unfiltered of the impurities of uncandor, 
inconsistency, equivocation and suppressed truth. Tom 
Hood, in that funniest of sketches, " A Sea-Teetotaller," 
reporting a conversation between the President and Vice- 
President of the Social Glassites, gives us the following: 

^^The Royal Humane Society might just as well make a 
procession of the people who don't drink water to excess, 
instead of those objects that do, and with ribbons and 
medals round their necks for being their own life-pre- 
servers !" 

" That's very true," said the Vice. ^'I've seen a Master 
Grand of a Teetotaller with as many ornaments about 
him as a foreign prince." 

" Why, I once stopped my own grog," continued the 
President, '^ for twelve months together because I was a 
little wheezy ; and yet never stuck even a snip of a rib- 
bon in my button-hole. But that's modest merit, — where- 
as a regular Temperance fellow would have put on a 
broad, blue sash, as if he was a Knight of the Bath, and 
had drunk the bath all up instead of swimming in it." 

This world is full of queer things. Now, if a piece of 
pie of the traditional boarding-house variety happens 
to give a man the dyspepsia or send him to the apothe- 



2 00 A SHORT TEMPERA^XE LECTURE. 

cary in a fit of indigestion, does he attempt to disguise the 
cause of his ilhiess? Not at all. On the contrary he 
and the men and women with headaches and stomach- 
aches and neuralgias and the other aches and pains be- 
gotten of a disordered stomach never hesitate to discuss 
with an unbeautiful frankness the state of their digestive 
apparatuses. But the poor old malefactor, John Barley- 
corn, is tabooed. If John Doe gets his skin distended 
with an over-potion of intoxicables, he generally adds the 
sin of lying to the vice of inebriety, and denies the cause 
of his discomfort. If Susan Roe goes to sleep on top of the 
bed with her clothes on, and thereby lets the baby get the 
croup, she is rarely candid enough to own herself a vic- 
tim of misplaced affection with regard to the mince-pie 
brandy bottle. But let her get the cramps from too many 
slices of the plum-pudding, and mark the eager candor 
with which she relates the story of her colicky misfortunes. 
And yet the chief difference tending to this contrasted 
manner of treatment is only that which lies between a 
liquid and a solid. Somebody has lately said that the 
time is coming when it will be as disgraceful to have the 
typhoid fever as it is to have the itch or to be infested 
with vermin. The theory is that due and decent cleanli- 
ness of habit and surroundings will avert that disorder. 
Now, if it is a disgraceful thing to have a whiskey-head- 
ache, why is it not equally shameful to have a vertigo 
from cramming too many slices of mince-pie or too many 
pounds of Sally Lund ? What's the difference between a 
doughnut and a shandygaff, if each is the producing 
cause of an attack of jaundice or the lumbago ? 



MIND YOUR STOPS. 201 

Mind Your Stops.— There is a substantial virtue in 
even the humblest and least pretentious of punctuation- 
marks, as for example. In Lippincott's Magazine for 
June is an article on Visual Photography. By this paper 
we are informed of the discovery by one of those awful 
German Professors, of a property of the eye which he 
calls the ''retinal red." This discovery has led to many 
experiments, the outcome of which seems to be that the 
eye is a natural photograph instrument ; and the old idea 
comes to be revived that the last object seen by the dying 
man (that of his murderer, for example), is retained, after 
death, upon the retina. Well, a thorough reading of the . 
paper in question brings you to the following sentence at 
the beginning of the paragraph : 

Even before the discovery of the retinal red, Hering of Vienna 
called attention to the phenomena attending the formation of what 
is known as the negative image of an object. 

See the place where the value of careful punctuation 
is illustrated ? Do you not discover that if the comma 
at the end of the first eight words above quoted were left 
out, the unwary reader would be fetched up '' standing " 
against what would seem to be an unaccountable red her- 
rmg? So, my children, mind your stops. 




BLUE MONDAY. 



BLUE MONDAY. 

TN the earlier days of one's life he associates the Blue 
epithet which has been, time out of mind, prefixed 
to Monday, with the inconveniences of washing-day, the 
awful odor of soap-suds, the flapping in his face of wet 
sheets hanging on the clothes line and all the disagreea- 
bles which are born in tubs and bred by soap and rain- 
water, wash-boards and steaming boilers full of soiled and 
limpsey garments. But the time comes apace when the 
adult male so far dissociates himself from the mysteries 
and miseries of the washtub as to be practically a stranger 
thereto ; when home is home without a leaching barrel, 
and when the smell of starch no longer offends his nose. 
And yet, even in these after and maturer years, Monday, 
somehow, is not any less cerulean than " When Music, 
heavenly maid, was young." It must be that the observ- 
ance of the Sabbath is so far exhaustive of our spiritual 
natures as to leave us in the dumps of despond when 
Monday comes. Yesterday was very blue ; not a gentle 
tint, faint and delicate hke the turquoise ; not blue like, 
the sparkhng and phosphorescent sea ; not blue like unto 
that ultramarine which found its birth within the pearly 
mouth of sea-shells upon the margin of 

"The great mid sea which moans with memories," — 



2o6 BLUE MONDAY. 

but a dull, leaden, dead and buried blue such as casts 
pall across the heavens and brings on that traditional in 
precation when one is said to be so far lost as to '^ curse 
his grandmother." We do not suppose any man ever 
did, just because Monday's blueness had fallen on him, 
visit upon that venerable relative such violence of invect- 
ive ; but there is that about or within or upon the day 
when it comes as yesterday came, which is very discour- 
aging to the moral and religious side of one's nature. It 
•is as if one were in an all-pervading Missouri, doomed for 
a life-time to dwell in Boonetown and listen to an eternity 
of the Arkansaw Traveler done to murder with an inart- 
istic catgut and tortured by atrocious horsehair. The 
dust of months is upon us ; and the crisp leaves, browned 
and yellowed and reddened into ripeness, instead of rust- 
mg in frolicksome heaps bestirred by the playful winds 
of Autumn, are getting ground into a dull and lifeless 
powder and mingling ingloriously and before their time, 
with the all-pervading dirt. The season's lingering un- 
naturalness is intensified by these phenomena ; and yes- 
terday the palliating brightness of a too prolonged Fall 
was deadened with clouds and stifled with the dust which 
lies on every hand, rises up against the good and the bad 
and bears witness of the distress that has come upon 
poor Mother Earth. We are not of those who hope for 
sunshine on Christmas. We hope the floodgates of 
heaven will be let loose ere then ; that Jupiter will send 
us a present of rain or snow, and that the parched ground 
will find relief. Some years ago, before the degeneracy 



BLUE MONDAY. 



207 



of the age had become confirmed, there came a Christ- 
mas when the stout guests swam to their dinner or forded 
the streams which ran Hke rivers down our streets. Then 
the guest, dry within but damp without, sat him down as 
he had been a flotsam and took his fare in moist and mel- 
low thankfulness. Now — but the contrast is too painful. 
To think of one's Christmas goose garnished with dust, 
stuffed with dust, seasoned with dust of unseasonable 
summer savory and the gravy thickened with the dust of 
the air and earth ? And then the Christmas pud- 
ding — to see it brought on by a melancholy waiter 
and dusted before it is served — dusted with a feather 
duster, instead of flaming with the fires of burning brandy! 
It is too much ! This merry season will, we fear, lie 
under a '' grey and melancholy waste" and the holly leaves 
and berries be whitened, not with a covering of snow but 
with an overlayer of dust — as it were with sackcloth and 
ashes. But it is possible that we are possessed of the 
blueness of the Monday wherein we write, and that things 
are not as bad as they seem ; that there is more cheer 
than dust in the air ; that people breathe, joyously, the 
lightsome breath of Christmas-tide ; that it is we and not 
Monday that is blue, and that the holly leaves and 
berries wiU take on their accustomed sheen, rain or 
shine, dust or snow. If any man knows where a tur- 
key would do a great deal of good ; where such a gift 
would warm a widow's heart and hearth ; where even a 
bag of potatoes or a sack of flour would make happy 
some sorrowing soul, do not let the sun of Christmas go 



205 COCK ROBIN S STORY. 

down upon the stinginess of that moneyed man who, 
seeing these opportunities, lets them pass unimproved by 
him. Blue Monday is bad enough at best, but it affords 
no excuse for blue Christmas ; and if moral degeneracy 
and mental weakness cannot be restrained, at least let 
them be unheeded and the contagion of their despon- 
pondency be averted. Meantime it is not much too 
early to begin whispering a ^' Merry Christmas," in your 
sweetheart's ear, young man ; and mamma and daddie, 
recollect that hose are long and life is fleeting and that 
you had better scrimp awhile than that Alice and Earnest 
and the rest should go about on Christmas morn with a 
hunger at their hearts over little gifts withheld and kind- 
nesses forgotten or denied. Look back, oh man ! and 
be reminded of the choking hours that have come to 
you in your childhood because of the want of that kind- 
ly notice which is better than riches, better than useful 
things, better than all — ^and don't forget to make repara- 
tion for the sins of the fathers ! 



Cock Robin's Story — What makes robins always 
sing their own peculiar song so soon as there has been a 
shower of rain or even a mere sprinkle, and the sun has 
come out again ? They always do, do robins. Yester- 
day, after the unpleasant tempest of wind which had 
so raised the dust, had subsided, there were a few vagrant 
pattering rain drops. This was excuse enough for -Mr. 
Robin Red-breast. He mounted the tallest cottonwood 



ABOUT DOGS. 209 

and piped his lay. That song is as old as the life of man! 
They sing as in your and my childhood, oh grey-haired 
reader ; and they sang in the ears of Job and Joshua and 
in old Homer's ears. When the rain-shower which had 
been falling upon the building Pyramids had yielded to 
the rays of parting day, Cock Robin chanted his blithe 
note in the ears of the tired Egyptians ; and over the 
toil of the Visigoths, and over their fields of war this 
bird rang out, in the self-same voice as now he sings to 
his mate across the scattered oases of these new lands of 
the reclining sun, the cheery tune which greets the ear to- 
day. Age cannot wither nor custom stale the freshness of 
his song ; his note is as old as the moaning sea ; and his 
plumage was known to the landscape which saw sweet 
Ruth among the standing corn ! 



About Dogs. — What a fond, faithful animal is the dog! 
He is nearer to man in his affections and his tastes (for 
a dog has tastes), than any other of the brute creation. But 
he has his peculiarities of habit, association, race and pre- 
vious condition. Recently an amiable friend of ours made a 
present of his dog to one of his acquaintances. The dog was 
a fine, healthy fellow, all kindness and good nature, and 
the children were delighted with their new companion and 
playfellow. But he had grown quite big, being scarcely 
less than a year old ; and so when he came to be chained 
to his new kennel he felt strange and disconsolate and 
grieved for his master, and could only be assuaged by 



2IO ABOUT DOGS. 



3 



constant petting by his new friends who were assiduous 
in their attentions with deUcate tidbits of cooked dainties 
interspersed with an ahuost ruinous bountifulness of 
lumps of sugar. In the still watches of the night his 
voice was heard. He sighed for liberty, as it were. His 
sighs sounded like an aimless and insane bassoon. He 
mourned for his master ; and his voice was like a be- 
reaved and comfortless fog-horn. He poured forth the 
pent-up volume and torrent of his griefs from the depths 
of a bursting heart, and his voice was as the voice of the 
waihng night, lifted up in a tone of quenchless lamenta- 
tion ; and it was as if the Cavern of the Winds were 
vainly struggling to express the Dead March in Saul. 
Oh ! but he made life a burden, and all thought and shape 
of sleep a mockery and a torment ! Willis was so desi- 
rous to portray the agonies of Prometheus Bound that 
he exclaimed, 

" Oh God ! could I but paint a dying groan. " 

It would have required the most subtle art of the most 
gifted painter to reproduce, in adequate emphasis, the 
volume of this poor beast's living and strenuous grief ! 
Fred Cozzens had his grievous experiences in the dog- 
gish way, as Mr. Sparrowgrass has so pathetically related 
but they were acute and soon abated. Besides they were 
his griefs, and not the dog's. But if there ever rolled up 
from the depths of a sacred sorrow the struggling out- 
heavings of the fullness of the bitterness. 

The wormwood and the gall 




ABOUT DOGS. 211 

of a woe, which Hke the darkness of Egypt, could be 
felt, this night time desolation of a poor dog's heart sd 
found vent and voice ! They turned him loose, they 
did, in the midst of a patient but distracted neighbor- 
hood whose lives had been made a mockery, and from 
whose haggard lids all possibility of repose had been 
driven away. That dog's name henceforth is The Thane 
of Fife ; for 

Macbeth hath murdered sleep. 

We have alluded to Fred Cozzens's experience. We 
have recourse to the Sparrowgrass Papers. " I have 
bought me another dog," says Mr. S. " I bought him 
on account of his fine, long ears, and beautiful silky tail. 
He is a pup, and much caressed by the young ones. One 
day he went off to the butcher's and came back with no 
more tail than a toad. The whole bunch of young Spar- 
rowgrasses began to bawl when we reached the cottage, 
on account of his tail. I did not know him when I 
came home, and he could not recognize me — he had lost 
his organ of recognition. He reminded me of a dog I 
once heard of, that looked as if he had been where they 
wanted a tail, merely, and had taken his, and thrown the 
dog away. Of course I took my stick, and went to see 
the butcher. Butcher said ' he supposed I was some- 
thing of a dog-fancier, and would like to see my dog 
look styhsh.' I said, on the contrary, that I had bought 
him on account of his handsome, silky tail, and that I 
would give ten dollars to have it replaced. Then the 
idea of having it replaced seemed so ridiculous that I 



2 12 NIGHT AIRS. 

could not restrain a smile, and then the butcher caught 
the joke, and said there was no way to do it except with 
fresh putty. I do love a man who can enjoy a joke, so 
I took a fancy to that butcher. When I got home and 
saw the dog, I thought less of the butcher, but put a 
piece of black court-plaster on the dog, and it improved 
his appearance at once. S6 I forgave the butcher, and 
went to bed at peace with all mankind. '' 



Night Airs.^ — -Whoever has been accustomed to walks, 
at night, through our less frequented streets — those which 
lie nearest the Sierra — has remarked, no doubt, (if he be 
at all susceptible to and observant of the more delicate 
influences with which he is brought in contact), the fre- 
quent changes in the temperature of the air — a sudden 
warm current at a street corner or at an intersection mak- 
ing it seem as if he has come, all at once upon a distinct 
climate. The change is a delightful one, always a sur- 
prise and always a subject of comment. Such balminess 
in the air speaks of treasured reservations of warmth kept 
secure from the prevailing cool temperature of the brood- 
ing night, just as there are gentle influences kept and pre- 
served, pure and warm and unsullied even amidst the 
most vicious surroundings and bitter discouragements. 
There is here and there a spotless gem of serenest virtue 
growing like a perfect flower amidst the ruin and wreck 
and utter hideousness of moral deformities. 



NIGHT AIRS. 213 

These sudden-coming breathings of balmy air call to 
mind these lines of Robert Browning's : 

The gray sea, and the long black land, 
And the yellow half-moon, large and low, 
And the startled little waves, that leap 
In fiery ringlets from their sleep 
As I gain the cove with pushing prow. 
And quench its speed in the slushy sand. 

Then a mile of warm, sea-scented beach. 

Three fields to cross, till a farm appears ; 

A tap at the pane ; the quick, sharp scratch. 

And blue spurt, of a lighted match ; 

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears. 

Then the two hearts beating each to each. 

We doubt if there be in all the ranges of English 
poetry a more notable instance of the power of senten- 
tious or condensed description than this. In some re- 
spects it surpasses Tennyson's opening lines in Enoch 
Arden, beginning — 

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; 
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands 
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf 
In cluster ; then — etc. 

The words, '^Then a mile of warm, sea-scented beach," 
in Browning's poem somel^ow remind one of the warm 
night-airs above mentioned. 



2 14 CONCERNING CATS. 

Concerning Cats. — We are disposed to resent the 
following statement by a recent writer in the Fort7iightly 
Review : "The cat," he says, "is more sensitive to rari- 
fied air than any other domestic animal." And he pro- 
ceeds with his facts and figures as follows : " Attempts 
to acclimatize it at Potosi, Bolivia, 13,000 feet above the 
sea, having failed : It has remarkable tetanic fits, begin- 
ning like St. Vitus's dance, and after spasms, in which it 
leaps violently up the side of a house, dies in convulsions. 
Cats born 7,300 feet above the sea are deaf" We are 
very skeptical regarding this writer's conclusions. This 
Notary knows a cat or two himself Carson is pretty well 
up in the world — nearly 5,000 feet above the sea level ; 
and yet the very faithful, conscientious and efficient 
Mouser of the Morning Appeal office not only never 
had a fit tetanic nor Titanic, but she has twice performed 
the functions of maternity within the half year last past, 
and even now purrs with remarkable emphasis of satisfac- 
tion over the six kittens which have come to give fruition 
to her hopes and ambitions. The fact is, Tabby, as she 
cuddles her strenuous flock, is a living resentment of the 
theory that rarified air has any deleterious effect upon the 
feline family. And we have no doubt we could bring a 
great deal of the very best of testimony to prove the ex- 
ceeding healthfulness and fecundity of the cat tribe in 
Carson. Indeed we know a lady of unexceptionable 
character whose sitting-room is on the ground floor of her 
dwelling house and who, in the hearing of this Inquisitor, 
has frequently expressed astonishment bordering on alarm, 



CONCERNING CATS. 215 

at the violent and long-continued noise produced by what 
seemed to be Conventions resulting in noisy debates by 
societies or cabals of cats of both sexes held at unseason- 
able hours under the floor. Not only loud and angry 
vociferations found vent at these meetings, but judging 
by the angry sounds against the floor-boards, actual con- 
flicts between the disputants. Now, if rarified air pro- 
duces any deleterious effect, it makes one short of breath. 
But will any competent witness come forward and declare 
upon his oath that the cats of Nevada are at all wanting 
in strength of lungs ? As to longevity look at our old 
friend Tom, at the apothecary's. He has known every 
ointment, every lotion, every bolus, every tincture and 
every prescription made, kept or fabricated at that shop 
these twelve years that we know of. His teeth are pretty 
badly worn, but his hearing is marvelously acute. Now, 
what more need be said in refutation of the absurd theory 
advanced by this Fortnightly Reviewer? Moreover, it 
will strike the reader as very singular that an animal 
with nine whole lives of its own cannot manage to make 
at least one of them take root even on the upper levels of 
the Cordilleras. Furthermore, does not the wild cat, (a 
very near relation to the domestic animal) flourish in ab- 
normal vigor on and about the very highest altitudes of 
our mountainous regions ? 



r 



MAN AS A BAROMETER. 



MAN AS A BAROMETER. 

COMEHOW these scraps and odds and ends have a 
tendency to take a retrospective turn, varied with 
a semi-reflective meteorological weakness. Thus, this 
Querist finds himself dweUing in the Past what time he is 
not taking upon himself the colors and tones of the sur- 
rounding air and light. This would seem to indicate a 
cross betw^een an ingrained old fogyism and a somewhat 
barometrical susceptibility. Doubtless a love for the 
Past is one of those natural, solacing refuges of thought 
which come to reassure and cheer those who are con- 
scious of growmg old and gradually moving away from the 
land-marks cherished by self-consequence and a specula- 
tive habit which suggests what might have been. As to 
the effects of climate upon the human fabric, isn't the 
theory a thoroughly accepted one ? Certain classes of 
men can no more be born and bred in the valleys than 
certain mountain plants can so be nurtured. The high- 
lands, the lofty tops of hardly accessible peaks have 
always afforded not only a peculiarly pure air and water, 
hardy trees and vigorous grasses and flowers, but brave, 
free-spirited, strong-limbed men and women, as well. 
And so, men born amid fogs and salt sea breezes are of 



2 20 MAN AS A BAROMETER. 

a different type from those whose Hves are passed amid 
sunshine and the gentler airs of inland vales. If these 
are mere truisms, (which this scribe hastens to admit), 
they prove what we have hinted at, namely. That we, 
(that is to say the collective and comprehensible We 
which stands for mankind in general), are honest or 
roguish, poetical or prosy, good natured or ill-tempered, 
good, bad or indifferent, as the weather affects that deli- 
cate fabric of the system w^hich acts upon the mental 
processes and the moral qualities just as the '' governor" 
acts on a steam-valve. To be benighted and chilled to 
the bone, and wet with rain, and a long way from home, 
with a bad night before him, will transform a delicately 
constituted moral teacher into a peevish and fault-finding 
misanthrope ; while such conditions on the other hand 
are likely to develop all the more generous and heroic 
qualities of the felonious, the criminal and the prowling. 
These lifeless north winds that sweep so mercilessly 
across the plains and hillsides of Nevada, are, we venture 
to assert, to be charged with quite as much responsibility 
for the enactment of crime as rum and riot. There is a 
deal of wickedness in a storm of dust and sand. One 
of these days, when this Annotator arrives at that blissful 
age when morning gowns and study chairs and the lei- 
sure of libraries, and the restfulness of retiracy have 
come, he proposes to dig down into the statistics and the 
science of sociology and determine, as far as pjossible, 
what are the relative records of badness of human action 
between Septembers that have been pleasant and Sep- 



MAN AS A BAROMETER. 221 

tembers that have been disagreeable ; between October 
and February or August and April, m a given isothermal 
belt, in this regard. We should expect to find some such 
changes as these : Pleasant, showery September, with light 
afternoon breezes and balmy days and nights, much de- 
velopment of poetry, music and art, accompanied by very 
light sprinkles of cheating, forgery and theft. Per contra : 
A blustery, blue, cold month, with crab-apple cribbage 
parties of wrangling old maids, in-doors ; destruction to 
the contents of clothes-lines, hats and shingles, out of 
doors, and a fearful record of arrests at the Police magis- 
trate's. And so on, through the calendar. The homeo- 
pathists hold to the theories of Hahnneman. That 
distinguished German theorist found that it was the infin- 
itesimal particles of drugs and herbs and chemicals which 
produced the effects sought for by the physician. We 
believe that a bad, chilling wind, blowing treacherously 
through a clear autumnal sky contains millions of little 
germs of what is vulgarly but expressively called cussed- 
ness. We believe that amiable men may be temi)ted to 
commit murder at such times ; for there is homicide and 
all the concomitants of violence in a neuralgia, a rheuma- 
tism or a toothache. With regard to the Past— the other 
condition and premise of this disquisition, it is worth 
much for what it can fetch. (We might state the conclu- 
sion clearer, perhaps, and seem less slovenly of conclusion 
and asservation.) The Past, if it be a pleasant one, — and 
the mellowing hues of the dim distance make it seem so 
— takes us away from the trying Present, and soothes 




2 22 MAN AS A BAROMETER. 

wounded vanity as it makes us forget for the moment the 
pains and twinges of our weather-bound surroundings. 
Thus the very aridness of the present season suggests 
other and kindher Septembers, and sunny curls and Ught- 
some laughter and innocent lov^e-maki ng, and the gather- 
ing of the early autumn flowers. There were quiet after- 
noons then which seem hallowed into a blessed serenity 
now ; there were quiet strolls beside rural roads and 
across the undulations of charming meadows ; there were 
the drowsy sounds which bespoke a peaceful calm, as we 
sat by the open fire and read old books — never too much 
to be thumbed and dreamed over and cherished ; and 
there were Sundays whose recurrence and keeping w^ere 
as free from all sour bigotry as they were from all thought 
of violence and hurtfulness and crime. We may not un- 
dervalue these reminiscences. They are above all mere 
idle, fault-finding comparisons, superior to all the imperti- 
nences of self-conceit. 

To sum up, then : The Past is to be beloved both now 
and forever, for the reasons that Leigh Hunt gives for 
loving the Christmastide — '' Because Christmas is Christ- 
mas." The name suggests the incidents and the cher- 
ished remembrances. We should cherish the Past because 
it was the sweetest time of life. As to the weather, even 
so self-reliant and great a poet as John Milton expressed 
the apprehension lest — 

"An age too late, or cold 
Climate, or years, damp his intended wing." 



LITTLE DROPS OF WATER, ETC. 223 

If this small essayist must find and fit a groove, let him 
come upon a smooth, well-shapen one, and occupy it 
worthily, making the best of his dreams and his fitful 
moods. 



Little Drops of Water and Little Grains of 
Sand. — ^There is something very like a January thaw of the 
old-fashioned sort, but of rather limited proportions upon 
us. There is a disposition upon the part of the soil of 
Carson street to thaw, heave up and bulge out in a ruttish 
and exacerbated way peculiar to this obstreperous, erup- 
tive and upheaving season. One has a right of inferring 
that the bowels of the earth, at such a time are some- 
what disturbed by getting cold and taking in too much 
ice-water and other drownish and swampy things : 

When Nature fills her maw 
And crams her greedy craw 
Agin' every prudent law — 
Of course she breeds a thaw. 

Carson was never so alive with the active forces of an 
aggressive and conspicuous dullness as now. It seems to 
strike in and take root : 

It seems as if the world were dead 

And going to be buried, 
And all across the river Styx 

We were going to be ferried. 

The oldest inhabitant is hauled out of his shallow retire- 
ment and set up in a garrulous prominence of fossiHferous 



2 24 OUT IN THE WEATHER. 



one ™^ 



aspect to babble of things as they used to be. We hope 
to help write his mouldy old obituary ere long. We 
wish he might be subjected to the terms and incidents of 
a January thaw. He might melt into sweeter cadences 
and run away, or evaporate. Then might we say : 

He is dead, 
But his head 

It will lie — 
In his coffin 
While he's loafin' 

Up " on high." 

Somehow the old pioneerish person, living on fly-blown 
and worm-eaten reminiscences is apt to degenerate into 
what the Farmer calls " a calamity." 

He gets to be a bore 
With his everlasting store 

Of old dates 
And his record of the past, 
Which are tougher than old cast- 
iron grates. 

But let us try to worry along, with here a thaw and 
there a freeze, here a drop of moisture and there a bless- 
ing of sunshine, here a stretch of desert and there a bed 
of flowers. 



Out in the Weather. — We saw two very beautiful 
things on Sunday. One was 'Hhe frolic architecture of 
the snow" as displayed by the shape and volume of the 
great white drifts that lie next the fence on the south 



OUT IN THE WEATHER. 225 

side of the creek as one marches up the railroad. There 
is a long line of this immaculate drifting which looks 
like an alabaster wave. Not any human hands could 
fashion a thing so delicately. And in another place is a 
deposit whose horizontal fashion "is like unto a prostrate 
winding staircase of Carrara marble. Oh, it is very beau- 
tiful, very white and very pure of form and substance. 
The other special thing of beauty which we sa^^ was a 
stout young Washoe brave escorting his wife and mother- 
in-law up toward the campoody, yonder. Strange to say, 
he was carrying the baby '^pig-back" in its wicker swad- 
dling place, the baby sleeping the sleep of the just, and 
the fond mother and her mother trudging along cheerily 
behind. This is not a usual sight. Commonly the dusky 
son of the forest reverses the words of the poet and 
makes them read : ^^ And women must work and men 
must weep, tho' the harbor bar be moaning." Right 
hearty was this stout savage, too, for as he trudged by in 
the rain, he said to this scribe, who was leisurely pursuing 
the same direction, '' Kind 'o wet ! " — to which expression 
th2 ladies warbled a good-natured, gutteral assent. The 
wife was warmly tho' unfashionably clad with many a stout 
woolen wrap, and she walked along, brightly in her own 
black hair, unbonnetted ; while the dame marched in the 
rear of the squad with her back sheltered by sundry parti- 
colored cloths, surmounted by a fortunate, well-selected, 
and apparently water-proof bit of Chinese sugar-matting. 
Not at all pretentious, this elderly person, but resolutely 
facing the weather and failing not to close up her flank 



2 26 OUT IN THE WEATHER. 

of the file. And it is further to be stated that when we 
returned down the track in the rain, it was raining in a 
very showerful way. We encountered a lank Chinaman 
marching as wet as Cassius when on a raw and gusty 
day, accoutred as he w^as, he plunged into Father Tiber 
and did buffet the waves thereof with as stout a heart 
and a more prevailing muscle than '^ the tired Caesar." 
Not in the least cheerful seemed this damp and dripping 
Mongolian ; but very wry of face and distressful of at- 
titude seemed he. His response to our salutation was 
crisp, curt and lacking of heartiness. He disappointed 
us. We thought^ him a better water-dog. But like any 
other piece of China, he seemed to hold moisture and 
not leak. We noticed that the meadow larks (which are 
surprisingly abundant), kept piping away as if they liked 
the music of the dancing rain. Indeed, 

" The mother of months in meadow and plain 
Fills the shadows and windy places, 
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain." 

And never did it pour down harder for about eight 
blessed hours than from about the coming of the '^ Sab- 
bath " noon. It was splendid ! 

* * :Jf -Jf * 

Very towering and fleecy are the clouds whose white 
heads lift themselves up into the empyrean, these June 
days ; and but for the dust they bring with them, we 
should enjoy the afternoon breezes they fetch along to 
keep themselves company. As it is, one may sit under 
the speckled shadows of his thick-leafed trees and take 



OUT IN THE WEATHER. 227 

in no little comfort from the cooling zephyrs which float 
along. Our sudden-coming heat seems to conjure up 
the electricals, and the afternoon sky gets darkened, along 
the southern horizon with threats of showers and thunder- 
storms. As we write the air is getting cooled ; and the 
voice of the ice-cream man seems to fade away into some 
cold blue shade of the frowning Sierra. There go some 
of our aboriginal friends, their bits of scarlet raggery 
gleaming afar and adding a tone of picturesqueness to 
the general tameness of the middle-ground. We note 
that the mosquitos have come to share with the butter- 
flies and the June-bugs the balmy summertide. This is 
a good season wherein to observe the shape of your chil- 
dren's heads, albeit they undergo, irrespective of sex, the 
'^shingling" process; which tonsorial improvement in- 
vites the frugal housewife to her annual scrubbings of the 
juvenile pate and the cleansing of winter-soiled scalps. 
Now swings the husbandman his scythe ; now delveth 
the amateur gardener among his tender growths ; now is 
awakened the perennial horror of such insectiverous life 
as finds nourishment upon the cheek of the blushing rose 
and seeks the tender leaves of precious herbs. We note 
that the meadow lark is singing again. This means that 
his early spring courtship and mating and nesting have 
fulfilled the measure of their importance and resulted in 
their first ^' crop " of callow larklings — with one of whom 
we became unexpectedly acquainted yesterday. This 
latitude beats all for yellow roses ! Yonder is a bush-full 
which is nothing less than a flood of golden light — topped, 



2 28 BLIND. 

by the way, with some as haughty red roses as ever 
claimed a place in any landscape. 



Blind. — When a daily writer suddenly finds himself 
deprived of the use of one of his eyes, and is become a 
temporary inmate of his own private asylum for the half- 
blind (as there are public asylums for half orphans and 
people who are half crazy), he begins to experience some 
sensations which are as curious as they are disagreeable. 
vShut up one eye, oh two-eyed reader, and see how near 
you can come to determining accustomed distances — 
say, for example, the distance between your breakfast 
plate and your mouth, as measured by your fork, if you 
eat with a fork, or your knife, if you eat with that weapon. 
Reach out for the butter-dish or the sugar-bowl, thus one- 
eyed, and see (or half see) how near you will miss hitting 
it. For a few times you will succeed, and wonder at your 
success, just as new beginners win at cards or make good 
shots at billiards and have no idea in the world how they 
did it. Presently, when you reach out for the salt you 
will fetch up against your teacup and cause an alarming 
catastrophe upon the table cloth ; and then, by a miscal- 
culation you Will land a fork-full of scrambled eggs in 
your lap or a piece of butter inside your vest and upon 
your shirt. If you are a profane man, you will swear, 
inwardly or outwardly, or what is more probable, (being 
in the way of doing things by halves), you will emit your 
objurgations in a vehement ^vhisper. Now, this Notary 




BLIND. 229 

hath (so to speak) his right eye in a sUng. (Dr. White 
has invaHded that optic under a compress and certain 
emphatic injunctions; and these lucubrations must be 
cut short ; for your loyal and obedient patient must mind 
his orders if he breaks owners). The Constant Reader, 
dear patient soul, is spared a disquisition upon a Great 
Moral and Physical Topic by these clinical orders and 
this disability, and so he may be the gainer. The fact is 
we intended to revamp the prolific subject of Youthful 
Offendings, mainly called Hoodlumism, as suggested by 
the arrest, on Monday of some lads who are going at 
loose ends toward some eventual tight tethering. But 
our half-blindness teaches the charitable thought of pos- 
sibly imperfect moral vision, and so (Justice being blind 
and sympathetic) we hesitate to form or express any irre- 
vocable and hard-headed opinions. One of these days 
we may '' hire a hall." There is snmethmg to be said; 
be sure of that .... And now it is to be said that these 
odds and ends must be given o'er for this one time and 
perhaps for a blind-eyed day or two. The spirit of the 
Inquisitor is willing but the flesh of the Notary is weak. 







LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 




LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 



Yank's, Lake Bigler, July lo, 1877. 

\/f R. EDITOR : One can make the trip, even in a 
very hot day, from Carson to this place, and not 
hurt his horses or overstrain them, if he will make up his 
mind to make an all-day trip of it. Say you leave Car- 
son at 9 o'clock in the morning, you will make stage time, 
if you don't reach the Glenbrook until i o'clock. By 
making stage time, I mean such time as Benton's stages 
make — about four hours. It seems to be merciless to 
take less time than we took with any sort of a team, 
ascending the grade with a buggy and two adults and a 
child, as we did. The ascent is very hard. The weather 
is very hot. Your animals must be allowed to breathe 
on the bridges and other level places. Of course, the 
time above given is absurdly long, if one has a fast-travel- 
ing team, able to trot rapidly over level stretches. But a 
careful driver would restrain even a free-going team, with 
the Clear Creek grade before them, and the thermometer 
in the nineties. A rest of an hour and a half at Towle's 
snug litde restaurant, and a baiting for the beasts when 
they have got cooled off and out (for every judicious 
traveler sees that his horses are fed every time himself is 



2 34 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER'. 

foddered), and man and team are prepared for the fifteen 
or sixteen miles to this famous hostelry. The famous 
ride is as delightful as ever — shaded, cool, constant in 
its succession of surprising glimpses of the Lake, and the 
air all the time redolent of resinous perfumes from the 
pines and heavy odors from the matted masses of what 
goes by the general name of the chapparal. At the Cave 
the non-combatants of the party fo^md temporary enter- 
tainment, scaring a brood of young hawks, just fledging 
in a nest in the rocks above the entrance. At that love- 
liest of places, (now deserted) Zephyr Cove, paterfamilias 
got out of the buggy to get a cup of water from the brook 
which babbles across the road. Scarce had he reached 
the leveFof the little stream, when he heard a tremendous 
floundering in the stream. He thought he had disturbed 
a bull-frog or possibly a mud-turtle. It proved to be a 
brace of trouts who were urging their painful way up to- 
ward some spawning place, above. Some exclamations 
from the buggy drew his attention to the fact that the 
venturesome fish had crossed the road and were still 
struggling with the riffles and petty cataracts of the stream. 
They were soon espied in a shallow bay, almost stranded. 
Then did a valorous hand pounce down on the bigger 
one and seize him. The contest was fierce and deter- 
mined, tho' brief, on both sides. The struggle for liberty 
was a success ; the hand was conscious of being attached 
to a wet and dripping arm ; returning sanity revealed a 
pair of dampened feet and a much bedraggled linen 
duster, and life seemed a mockery and a weary pilgrim- 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 235 

age. We drove thoughtfully to Friday's Station, and while 
the beasts slaked their thirsts, we prospected for the tow- 
ering form and ruddy face of the landlord, but the Hon- 
orable James Small, with his usual gallantry, had volun- 
teered to act as escort to some young ladies, visiting 
thereabout, and was not at home. Also, we missed the 
coveted draught of buttermilk, it not being churning day. 
We wandered through the low lying meadow lands along 
the lake shore, constantly reminded of the stretches of 
salt marshes lying about the mouths of creeks and rivers 
which empty into the Atlantic, and here and there catch- 
ing glimpses of verdure as lush as anything under tropic 
skies. The forest murderers are doing a dreadful havoc 
among the pines. Great teams and bawling ox-drivers 
are as busy as men who hastily construct a fort upon the 
imminent vantage places where the battle lines of war are 
drawing close, and there are evidences of hot strife on 
every hand. 

The stroller is painfully reminded of his ignorance of 
botany by coming upon the many strange flowers which 
grow by every path side in these mountain ways. And 
each little vale and every gulch seems to have its own pe- 
culiar flora. There is a wagon-road running from Yank's 
to the South East or upper end of that loveliest of sheets 
of water, Falling Leaf Lake. After it leaves the valley 
of Lake Bigler, it winds around under the bluff which, 
cast up like an earthwork on the margin of the lake by 
some singular freak of nature, hides its gleaming surface 
from the eye of the traveler, and after passing through 



236 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 

some gates which stand at the entrance of Lucky Bald- 
win's farm, it dips down toward the Northern border of 
the Lake ; and all along this road are magnificent views 
of the water and the reflected mountain side and trees. 
As one rides slowly along, the luxuriance and variety of 
the wild flowers distract one's attention from the broader 
and more stately scene of peak and lakelet, and here it is 
that one's faulty botany becomes a self-reproach. There is a 
little flower which is the exact counterpart in color and 
general appearance of the tiger-lily. We won't venture 
to say that it is like it in characteristics — for that would 
be to presume to be botany-wise and scientifical. But it 
is a tiger-lily in miniature. There is a white lily- like 
flower, or white and black rather, which has no superior 
in point of loveliness of structure and delicacy of tint in 
any garden. And the grasses seem peculiar, as also do 
the vines and the mosses. As to the pines, the larches, 
the firs and their relatives and connections, who shall tell 

their number and their distmctive qualities ? And . 

now about lake breezes. This Annotator stood on the 
wharf at Yank's on Sunday, watching, in religious mood, 
the wayward ways of the wind. Truly no (newspaper) 
man knows whence it comes or whither it goes. One mo- 
ment comes a puff from the South ; the next there is 
a not less decided breeze from the East ; in a twinkling 
there comes a catspaw from the Nor'west, in the next sec- 
ond the surface water seems blown in two or three direc- 
tions simultaneously. We had a talk with an intelligent 
and lake-experienced boat-builder. He said he had seen 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 237 

the wind descend upon the surface of the lake in the 
corkscrew form — spirally — a regular whirlwind such as no 
small boat, with or without sails, could stand for a mo- 
ment. And he liad seen a snow squall come in from the 
North, describe a horseshoe and then fly off at a tangent 
As to himself, he had been blown clean off from a raft he 
was trying to navigate with a setting-pole near the shore, 
and but for his qualifications as a swimmer he would 
have been drowned. And yet Sailor Jack, the keeper at 
Emerald Bay, came kiting over in his keel boat, under a 
balloon-reefed mainsail on Sunday afternoon, at the rate 
of 15 knots an hour. But Jack is a water-dog, and there's 
no drowning the likes o' him. 



THE ASCENT OF MOUNT TALLAC. 

Yank's Station, August 3, 1877. 

Editor Morning Appeal : I mounted Happy Jack 
(my steed, whose withers are yet unwrung), at half- 
past eleven o'clock on Wednesday morning (the ist 
inst.), and at half-past four o'clock p. m. I stood on 
the summit of Mount Tallac. This ascent being one 
of the duties of all conscientious Lake tourists, and 
it being among the possibihties that there are some 
of the readers of the Morning Appeal who never made 
that toilsome trip, I will briefly state some of the inci- 
dents of my journey and attempt something in the way 
of description of what I saw and experienced : I went 



238 LETTERS FROiM LAKE BIGLER. 

single-handed, found the trail, unaided, spent the night 
on the mountain, and had the famous acclivity all to my- 
self — sharing my lonesomeness with H. J. aforemen- 
tioned. The main purpose of my journey was to make 
two sketches, in oil, one of an afternoon view and the 
other of such parts of the morning scene as I might be 
enabled to seize upon. Suffice it to say, in this regard, 
that I did make the proposed sketches, and that so far as 
the chief objects of my undertaking are concerned, I was 
as successful as a very limited artistical accomplishment 
would permit. In this personal relation, I will only say 
further, that I chose for my camping place the east bank 
of Gilmore Lake, a sparkling little gem of mountain wa- 
ter lying about twelve hundred feet below the final uprise 
of the peak. Here I picketed my horse, here I built my 
camp-fire, from hence I cfimbed to the mountain top in 
the afternoon of Wednesday and with the dawning of the 
morn of Thursday ; and here I took what little sleep an 
over-tired and somewhat nervous condition would permit. 
As to my rough sketches, one is from the northern ex- 
tremity of the peak and the other from a point about 
midway above the only snow banks now left upon the 
northern side. 

And now as to the reward which awaits him who 
ascends this mountain: The view, as everybody tells 
you, includes a sight at a certain number of lakes. This 
seems to be, in the mind of the average climber, the one 
grand attraction and wonder. And it is true- —this lake- 
viewing statement. One can see a dozen or more 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 239 

lakes and lakelets, and they dot the vast landscape 
like so many bits of crystal. All these bodies of 
water seem to be supplied from Tallac itself, whose 
south side (up which you climb), is richly cov- 
ered with verdure kept alive and vigorous by in- 
numerable springs. . These lakes are all tributary to 
Lake Tahoe. But it seems to me that the glory of the 
scene is that which lies southward. This embraces Round 
Top, a vast mountain (much higher than Tallac), whose 
bare granite sides hold great fields and deep banks of 
snow, even at this late day, in the summer-time. This 
bald peak, seeming bare of all vegetation, is flanked on 
either side with other huge mountains, and when the set- 
ting sun casts the shadow of their peaks in great slanting 
belts across their darkening sides, the view is very grand. 
The light of the rising sun, when it first gets above the 
high horizon, covers these peaks with a warm mellow 
light which is very beautiful. Further toward the east 
there is what I cannot better describe than a great pro- 
cession of mountains, stretching afar. This last is the 
most distant seeming part of the panorama, tho' it is an 
illusion of the rare perspective which makes it appear so ; 
for the outlook over Tahoe gives you a sight of the peaks 
of the Sierra far beyond the rim of mountains which en- 
circle the Lake. As to this sheet of water, it lies before 
you like a map. The view embraces it all. Seen from 
the northern end of Tallac, it is exceedingly picturesque. 
To reach the top of Tallac mountain, one takes the 
wagon road along the margin of Falling Leaf Lake to 



240 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 



I 



Gilmore's Soda Springs. From the Springs one's way is 
up a trail which is all steep and rugged,, and for short 
reaches, quite blind. The real terminus of this trail is at 
Lake Gilmore, — my camping place. Any safe-footed, 
tractable saddle-horse used to mountain trails, can readily 
make the trip ; and it is quite feasible to ride within a 
few yards of the extremest summit. (I chose to make 
camp where 1 did, for, in the first place, I did not know 
if I could find water and grass for my horse further up, — 
though I found to my astonishment that the bunch-grass 
grows rank and lush 'way to the very summit, and that 
there are many springs bubbling out of the mountain 
side.) I discovered the fact that the pines and firs do 
not grow on the upper bench or uprise of the peak, but 
that those highest lands bear many cedars, tho' the pre- 
vailing tree is the tamarack, hackmatack or larch, as it is 
variously called. Does this illustrate that these last 
named trees are hardier than the pines or firs? Also I 
note that the tamarack grows upright and straight, on even 
the highest grounds, while the cedar is twisted and bowed 
as if yielding to the forceful action of the mountain tem- 
pests. As I have remarked, the bunch-grass grows very 
rank and in surprising abundance. I should say that this 
seems to be, in its limits, the finest range for cattle and 
horses I have ever seen on any mountains. Indeed it 
would be difficult to find better anywhere, for summer 
pasturage. (I noticed as I came down from my clamber- 
ing on Thursday morning a band of Gilmore's horses ; 
and they were what the stock men call "rolling" fat.) 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 24 1 

Near my camp are the ruins of two cabins and some 
dilapidated implements of the butter-maker — ^the wreck 
of a churn and some hopeless remains of old milk-pans. 
I quote as follows from some brief notes taken as I sat 
by my camp-fire in the gloaming of Wednesday : 

Above the cabins, Dimple Lake,* 
^ Mt. Tallac, August i, 1877. 

Left "America" for California this day 27 years ago. 

The night wind breathes its strength thro' the 
trees. 

Should think " Dimple" might be spanned by a two- 
mile race course. 

The wild pennyroyal of California grows in great abun- 
dance here, also the pink daisy or frost flower, the wild pea 
and a great variety of delicate and beautiful flowers 
whose names are unknown to me. 

Here's what's the matter with the Muse : 

Yon twisted cedars tell thy tale, Tallac, 

Of rifting storms and winds unlimited. 

And all the force and life of the free elements, — 

And forceful Nature in her strongest moods. 

Your hard, black beetling brow has seen 

For thousands upon thousands years, 

The seasons come and go, — 

Whitening the lesser and the taller peaks 

Which belt you round about, and seem 

* I named this sweet little lakelet '' Dimple" before I had been 
told that it was named after its discoverer, Mr. Gilmore. 



2 42 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 

To move In one grand far procession 

Toward a wild and limitless Beyond. 

And you have seen the lakes and cataracts far and near, 

The old and all the tender trees, 

And all the laughing brooks and swift descending avalanches, 

And seen the granite crumble and break 

Since the Infinite Force lifted ye up 

Out of the peaceful land and into the warring air, etc. 

(Make the meter, oh reader, to suit yourself, — my 
^^feet" are too tired to observe the rules of scanning.) 
This, as follows, comes nearer the gait of my halting 

muse : 

Oh, merciless Tallac, 

After many a thump and whack. 

I'm astride your rugged back. 

And I am blue and black. 

And limp as any sack. 

And yet I'm in the track 

Of a most infernal pack, 

Of mosquitoes who attack 

My neck about the back. 

And while my fire-logs crack, 

A smoke quite thick and black 

Puts me almost on the rack. 

But don't "smudge" the 'skeeters back 

From their riotous attack ! 

Getting too dark to write any more, so I must take a 
look at Happy Jack, say my prayers, and turn in. 

It only remains to be said at the end of this long letter, 
that to the energy of Mr. Gilmore is due the fact that 
there is any sort of trail making this magnificent peak 
accessible. He is in all respects the pioneer of this 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 243 

region, and tourists owe much to him and his courage and 
enterprise. As to the wonderful Soda Springs discovered 
and made known by him, they have aheady been described 
in the Appeal. 

I might relate many more incidents and observations of 
my trip, but what I might say will keep, and if it never 
gets into print, Httle's the matter, God knows. m. 



Yank's Station, August 8, 1877. 

Editor Appeal : The air hereabout is decidedly 
Fallish these nights and mornings, and the days are 
superb. Everywhere else the air is a compound. Here 
it is pure — all oxygen and nitrogen — or whatever first 
elements the atmosphere is made of Elsewhere it is 
part dust, part lint from superabundant old clothes, 
part particles of fever, scurvy, mumps and other ills to 
which flesh has fallen heir, and a good part the breath of 
duns, liars, book-peddlers and like afflictions and imper- 
tinences. Here there are no distillations, no exhalations, 
no second-hand vapors, no infinitesimals of corruption 
and disease. All you can do is to catch a cold in your 
head and wheeze like an asthmatic locomotive. And 
speaking of asthma, here is a gentleman close at hand 
who cannot manage to live in San Francisco, so much is 
he oppressed with his phthisic, who makes nothing of a 
ten-mile row in his skiff, or an all-day walk up and down 
hill and dale. Moreover, your " bear," here, is a genuine 



244 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 



character— not a disagreeable imitation of the dog in the 
manger with a masquerading, fantastical, borrowed name 
but a shaggy, savage, cow-eating, calf-devouring, bull- 
defying monster. The other day a dweller at Meeks's 
Bay (midway between Emerald Bay and Sugar Pine 
Point), informed me that he had been out in the high 
mountains to the west, all the day before hunting grizzlies. 
He said that he and his companions had come upon the 
*^sign " of Messieurs Bruin, and had seen where they had 
seized and squeezed and dragged to death the poor, strug- 
gling frightened heifers. " They catch a cow by the nose," 
said he, "and drag her off to where they and their cubs 
can devour her.'' There's something awfully tragic 
about this. It is little enough t.) say that these bear 
hunters came back without the game they were looking 
for. I don't think I ever was told before that the grizzly 
would attack live stock and make w^ay with it in canniba- 
listic fashion. I had a notion that he was more ruminant 
— a sort of half-swinish root-digger and possibly honey- 
pirate. But he seems a thorough savage beast and as 
bloodthirsty as a very tiger of the jungle. There are few, 
if any, deer in this rim of mountains about the Lake — on 
the Lake-slopes I mean. Twelve or fifteen miles to the 
west'ard, yonder, the black-tail deer is abundant. A keen 
old deer-stalker told me the other day that the ridge of 
mountains dividing our side from the Sierra Valley marked 
the bounds of two distinct kinds of deer. This side it is 
the black-tail ; on the other, it is the " mule " deer. The 
mule deer is so called because of his immense ears. Also 



I 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 245 

he differs from the black-tail in size, being much larger 
and heavier. Now what is the " mule ^' deer ? Is he at 
all related to the caribou of British Columbia ? There 
are no elk in the mountains. These frequent the foot- 
hills and valleys. At hand are many campers. The peri- 
patetic schoolmarm is also about — likewise the smaller sci- 
entist with wisdom on his face and spectacles on his nose, 
he may be seen astonishing the lesser and tenderer with 
his learning. The glacial theory finds many expounders. 
It is very instructive. One set of young fellows who are 
having a very hearty time of it, (among them are some 
young gentlemen from Virginia City), tell me they caught 
no less than eighty dozen trout in and about Hope Val- 
ley. That is, by as much as seventy dozen, too many. At 
this rate of slaughter there will soon be a complete anni- 
hilation of the native mountain trout. Why not, oh sports- 
man, see to it that once a year, there is a thorough replen- 
ishment of all clear cold streams with spawn and young 
fish ? In China, or somewhere else, (China is as good a 
name as any other for the purpose), when a man cuts 
down one tree he plants the seeds for several. So, when 
an angler catches a dozen trouts he should take steps to- 
ward the sure planting of enough of the ova of that fish 
to make up for the waste. But eighty dozen, my lads ! 
Eighty dozen is the pot-fullest kind of pot-hunting. As 
well shoot a sitting grouse on her eggs or a brood of quail 
with her little ,flock. I took a trudge yesterday to Cas- 
cade Lake — I and the boys. We went by Yank's new 
wagon road which takes you, direct, to that lovely little 



246 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 

sheet of water, in about three miles of very passable ^' go- 
ing." Our camping neighbors swarmed there, in time, 
and " made the waters which they beat to follow faster 
as amorous of their strokes ;" — and it may be said, fur- 
ther that as to their singing, *^it beggar'd all description." 
I shall probably go to Emerald Bay to-morrow as Sailor 
Jack's guest. 



EMERALD BAY. 

HoLLADAY Cottage, Emerald Bay, 
Lake Tahoe, August 9, 1877. 

Editor Appeal : This is as queer a world as any 
man ever saw with mortal vision. When, in the course 
of human events, a man is born and dandled, and 
measled and teethed, and vaccinated and mumped, and 
fetched up to manhood, and so on and so on — say he 
was brought into light and learning and morality and 
romance and all that, away off in Maine, by what method 
of an imaginative calculus or ratiocination might he, 
could he or would he see himself, all alone at night in 
such a place as I am in now, as much a solitaire (an 
Emerald solitaire), as Robinson Crusoe or the Man in 
the Moon ? I am Sailor Jack's guest — I and the boys — 
and Jack has gone to Yank's on some sort of business, 
and so here am I under the shadow of these tall cliffs, 
beside these gentle waters, mine ears greeted with the 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 247 

sound of laughing brooklets, the boys asleep in a soft 
bed, yonder, and the blessed dogs, Lulu and Major, 
nestled down for the night. I suspect that I feel some- 
thing roraantical, and of a sentiment-emitting turn ; but 
I have let myself be laughed out of it. By whom, do you 
suppose ? By nobody less able to do that good turn than 
our mutual and very welcome friend, William Makepeace 
Thackeray. These hermit-like cabins are rare places for 
the accumulation of old stockbooks. Prowling round 
among Jack's store of readables, I find his shelves duly 
stocked with these familiar, beetle black books, sent out 
by a lavish government, entitled Message and Docu- 
ments, State Dept, i8— , also Patent Office Reports, a 
copy of Walker's Dictionary, Mason's tract on Self- 
Knowledge (religious), Fred. Law Olmstead's American 
Farmer in England, None's Complete Epitome of Prac- 
tical Navigation, (London edition), and — a volume of 
Thackeray's writings, including the Shabby Genteel Story 
and the Professor — '' Professor Dandolo." If it is funny 
that one should fetch up in such an odd, out of the 
world nook as this, how equally funny it is to meet Thack- 
eray here and have him talk just as he has in libraries 
and clubs and parlors all the world around, this almost or 
quite half a century. I could not help contrasting my 
surroundings with the scenes of the Professor's first intro- 
duction to the reader — the Young Ladies' School in 
Hackney, London. Mark the title on the impressive 
brass door-plate : 



248 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 

" BULGARIA HOUSE. 

SEMINARY FOR YOUNG LADIES FROM THREE TO TWENTY. 

By THE Misses Pidge. 

(Please wipe your shoes.)" 

I say I could not help contrasting my snug but seques- 
tered lodging place with this establishment where one 
must wipe his shoes before entering in. I have said that 
I suspect myself of something of a sentimental turn ; 
and I have acknnowledged that the genial satirist has 
laughed it out of me. Hear him as he describes the 
predicament of love stricken Adeliza Grampus : ^' Love! 
Love ! how ingenious thou art ! thou canst make a lad- 
der of a silken thread, or a weapon of a straw ; thou 
peerest like sunlight into a dungeon ; thou scalest, like 
forlorn hope, a castle wall ; the keep is taken ! — the foe- 
man has fled ! — the banner of love floats triumphantly 
over the corpses of the slain." I must confess that ere 
the briny tears of sympathy had gathered in my eyes at 
the reading of those touching lines, I was fortunately 
attracted to a note at the foot of the page which punc- 
tures the rising bubble of pathos thuswise, as follows : ■ 
*' We cannot explain this last passage, but it is so beauti- 
ful that the reader will pardon the omission of sense, 
which the author certainly could have put it in if he had 
liked." This is worth finding all alone under the moan- 
ing pines, ain't it ? 

I took passage this morning at Yank's wharf with Mar- 
tin Silva — as thorough a boatman and as honest a man 
as ever found his way from the sweet Western Islands 



I 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 249 

into the heart of this new land. We ran over in an hour 
or a Httle more and were greeted by Jack's quickly-hoisted 
American flag, and then by my hearty friend Jack, him- 
self, who came down to the little wharf to meet us. Oh ! 
how lovely this place is by the early morning light. Oh, 
indeed, how lovely it is in all its nooks and paths and 
vistas at any and every moment. And oh ! what a dauber 
the cleverest painter that ever touched a brush is and al- 
ways will be in the face of this gorgeous foliage, so im- 
possible of imitation. One hears of the despair of ar- 
tists. Here, in these trails, among the lovely vines and 
ferns and grasses ; here under speckled shadows and 
dancing gleams of golden sunlight ; here where the tinted 
earth and many-hued hillsides shame all the carpets and all 
the dyes and all the pigments ever made or devised, may 
art confess itself baffled and her votaries made humble. 
I don't stand even among the ranks of respectable ama- 
teurs in the painting way ; but I know what I am talking 
about — my feet yet damp from a trudge through these de- 
licious paths and beneath these incomparable lights and 
shadows. 

But my candle gets short. It remains to be said that 
Sailor Jack has treated me and my bairns like a prince. 
Oh ! (how I do ** Oh !" to-night) — Oh, what a sea-stew 
Jack set us down to for our four o'clock dinner. It was 
a chowder, such as no man but an able seaman with the 
holy cross tattooed in his arm can make. I never had 
such a splendid meal, never ! I feel like going aloft and 
reefing a sky scraper ! I must have eaten at least seven 
or eight pounds. I am the gratefullest man living ! 



250 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 



CAP N DICK S DEATH. 

Yank's Station, El Dorado Co., Cal., August 12, 1877. 

Editor Appeal : I have a notion that my last let- 
ter was dated one day ahead of its actual time of 
writing. I seem to have had the extra day and spent it : 
and as one can't have his pudding and eat it too, I sup- 
pose I must content myself with having Father Time make 
his own terms, whatever the consequences may be to me, 
unduly anticipative and hasteful. There is all the less ex- 
cuse for my mistake, inasmuch as I have been making 
Westing and not the gainful Easting of a far cruiser, sea- 
wards. But my logarithms got mislaid and my sextant 
was afoul. And yet, if any man is to be excused for tam- 
pering with the movements of the planetary system, it is 
the man who seeks to hold the mirror up to nature by such 
brief limning and coloring as he may command withal. 
The shades and lights of the fast-fleeting sun are all too 
evanescent for him who would catch the rich effects of 
mellowed rays and broadened, deepened and long-slant- 
ing shadows. One may, if the arrows of his wit be swift, 
sharp-pointed and well-aimed, '^ Shoot folly as it flies," 
and one's hands must be not less skilled and one's fingers 
not less nimble to impart, with even moderate success, 
the transient and ever-changing effects of the inexorable 
and never-waiting sun .... My last letter was dated (or ante- 
dated), at Sailor Jack's cottage. Emerald Bay. That was 
Thursday night. On Friday, Jack rowed me and the 



I 



I 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 25 1 

boys over to Cap'n Dick's Island and left us there to our 
investigations and our studies. This island rises, in its 
highest part, something over (or under) two hundred feet 
above the surface of the Bay. It is a huge granite boulder 
cracked and split in many places and much of its material 
detached, here and there, and piled up in great jagged 
heaps of rocks. There are many precipices, and a few 
hardy pines and cedars have got a foothold. Also the 
undeniable chaparral asserts itself wherever it can find a 
clinging place — and its powers of tenacity are exceeding 
keen. So, that, with its greys and its browns and its 
greens and sudden shades, this famous little island is very 
picturesque. It is nigh by the stony apex of this island 
that Cap'n Dick excavated his burial-place and erected 
over it the little white cross-tipped house which is seen by 
all voyagers who enter Emerald Bay and explore its 
charming recesses. The tomb is a narrow cell, just of a 
size to admit one coffin. The excavation is *^ timbered 
up " as the miners say ; and the lagging or roof being 
covered with earth, the top of the place of sepulchre is the 
flat earth floor of the little white house aforesaid. Cap'n 
Dick was a tough old mariner; and like all old sea-dogs he 
had an undisguised contempt for all lakes and puddles 
and other fresh water demonstrations and ambitious imita- 
tions of the great ocean. Thus he made his brag, like a 
true tar, that '^ this damned frog-pond, (meaning Lake 
Bigler), would never turn him up. But it did turn him 
up — or down, rather, at last ; and as to the whited sepul- 
chral house which he so painfully made, is it not be- 



252 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 

smeared as out of the black contents of a marking pot, 
across its roof, with the names of Abraham Heyman and 
Solomon Tausig, of Gold Hill, and with lesser fragmen- 
tary signs and legends of famous squatters upon poor 
Dick's chosen but forever-to-be-empty last resting-place ? 
Alltalkof tastefulness and the sweet proprieties are silenced 
in presence of these autographical enterprises of illus- 
trious tourists. (Jack has promised me that he will oblit- 
erate these blinding impertinences with a bucket of white- 
wash). The story of the final catastrophe of dead and 
drowned Cap'n Dick may not be an uninteresting one to 
the readers of the Morning Appeal, albeit it has doubt- 
less been told before. By reference to the British Mer- 
cantile Navy List and Annual Appendage of the Com- 
mercial Code of Signals for all nations, of 1861, edited 
by J. H. Brown, Registrar General of Seamen and ship- 
ping, it will be discovered that one Richard Barter was 
granted by the Examining Board for London, in the 
year 1848, a certificate as First Mate in the Mercantile 
Marine Service of the Kingdom. This said Richard 
Barter was the identical Cap'n Dick whose name is so 
closely woven in with all the life, history and legendary 
lore of Emerald Bay. Sailor Jack, whose real name is 
JohQ Sullivan, and who is a native of St. John, New 
Brunswick, says that Cap'n Dick was a Bristol man, and 
that time was when he took part in the romantical risk^Hj 
of the smuggler's trade. It was four years ago, come this 
next month of September, that Cap'n Dick was to be, 
seen taking a bit of a spree at and about the GlenbrookJ 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 253 

Vesey kept that hostelry then ; and it was the next morn- 
ing after a ball there that Dick started in his 1 8-foot White- 
hall boat for his home in Emerald Bay. Martin Silva 
and Charley Johnson, well known Lake boatmen, helped 
him launch his boat ; but they exacted the promise from 
him that he would not hoist his sail — which was what the 
tars call of man-o'-war's-man's rig and fashion ; for it was 
a squally, wind-blown morning, and lake navigation was 
not without its perils even to a sober, experienced mari- 
ner. But once afloat, Dick could not resist the tempta- 
tion to fly his kite ; so he made sail before he was clear 
of the Glenbrook Cove, but had to furl it two or three 
times, so unmanageable was the little craft under the fit- 
ful puffs from the wind-breeding land. When he got ofl" 
the Logan Shoals, his sail was up again, and he had passed 
nigh to Cave Rock, and was far enough out to catch the 
east wind from Zephyr Cove, (whose low- lying lands 
make it a sort of unsalted Cape Hatteras) when a Nor- 
wegian fisherman, named Wilson, saw the sail suddenly 
disappear. It was then that Cap'n Dick yielded up his 
sixty-three years of rough and tumble to the '^ Frog 
Pond ; " and no sight of his poor old storm-beaten mor- 
tality has ever since been seen by human eyes. Some 
days afterward his stoven boat with its deadly sail all set, 
and his oars, were picked up on the shore of Rubicon 
Point. The oars even now may be seen in the little par- 
lor at the Holladay House. That's how Cap'n Dick met 
his death. He had been capsized once before in his 
Esquimaux-canoe-shaped boat ; and when he got safely 



2 54 LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 

ashore, he hauled that treacherous craft high and dry, and 
scuttled her for a wayward wench that it wouldn't do to 
trust. There she lies now, with the green grass and the 
yarrow growing through the auger holes in her floor planks. 
Dick Hved in his own house, just above the water level, 
on the Island. This house is a well-built structure of 
battened boards and shingled roof It is provided with 
a glass door and two windows of 10x12 Hghts. On 
the N. E. side is a stone-chimney surmounted by a large 
iron smoke-stack. Inside, the house (which has but one 
room), is ceiled and wainscoted, in panel work through- 
out. I looked through the window and saw the lonely 
old stranded mate's not unhandsome mantle-piece and 
wide comfortable chimney, also his broom, his three chairs 
and his table. He was prepared to keep hermit's hall 
in no little ease and safety from the weather. Close 
by his cabin is a stout, low-limbed cedar. In the spread- 
ing trunks of this he had fitted a seat, rustic fashion, such 
as he had seen in sunny days in his green home in Merry 
England. So there were many tender spots under the 
stranded sailor's rough exterior ; and he was not all cynic 
or world-hater, as he often seemed. And therefore, I 
furthermore suggest that those marking-pot names afore- 
mentioned, on his monument, are not in the gentlest of 
taste. It's' like plundering the dead, by non-combatants 

after the deadly fray We came back here yesterday 

in Jack's boat, he pulling one pair of sculls and a smart 
young woman from Storey county the other. Jack's dog, 
^' Major," followed the boat along the shore of the north 



LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 255 

side of the bay, and when we came to the entrance, in he 
jumped into the water and swam across to the south head- 
land, where Jack, being so persuaded by sympathetic 
pleadings, took the sagacious and faithful beast aboard. 
I note this little occurrence, for I like to let my readers 
know that I keep good company, even to the dogs of my 
association. 




LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 




LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 



[Editor's Note. — ^These letters were written from time to time during a stay 
of several weeks in San Francisco, within which period the writer underwent cer- 
tain experiences in the way of surgery at the French Hospital there. Hence the 
occasional hints of an invalid condition observable herein.] 



Palace Hotel, San Francisco, March 6, 1878. 

AyTY DEAR HEARERS : The other day, (that is to 
say, being precise and exact-Hke as to dates and 
seasons, yesterday, at Lightning Express breakfasting 
time) at Lathrop, there came from off the Southern Pa- 
cific train, then arriving, a fellow-citizen whom I had but 
little difficulty in recognizing as ^n old townsman and fel- 
low sojourner. General N. So begrimed with coal-ashes 
and soot was the stout General, that when I afterwards 
met him in my own car — that is, mine and others — I 
found myself instantly reminded of the well-known and 
pleasantly jingling lines by Geo. W. Clark, which run as 
follows : 

I met him in the cars, 

Where resignedly he sat ; 
His hair was full of dust, 
And so was his cravat ; 
He was furthermore embellished 
With a ticket in his hat. 



2 6o LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 

So, launching into talk, 

We rattled on our way, 
With allusions to the crops 

That along the meadows lay — 
Whereupon his eyes were lit 

In a speculative way. 

* * :^ * * * 

Here, for example, is a group of well-dressed, gesticulat- 
ing^Spanish gentlemen of the old-fashioned, grant-owning 
sort, rich, comfortable, not a little proud (as becomes a 
Castilian); — how they do blow off their cigarette smoke, 
nose-wise while they talk — smoke being of the very breath 
of their life, as it were. * * * I stroll out in the hall 
leading to the bar and detect Ex-Congressman Piper tak- 
ing a monobibe — which is a word I have invented to 
embody the lonesome idea of a solitary drink — a '^ Ken- 
tucky " treat : not that I wish Piper would treat me ; not 
at all, (for I don't drink), but because I like the sly old 
chap's dogged independence. * * * As I limp along 
the hall towards the Billiard Room (and a very beautiful 
one it is), I am accosted by a fellow-man, with a very, 
very red face, reddened into actual rubicundicity by the 
color of his nose, which seems not enlarged but shrunken, 
rather, as if it had been puckered by the action of some 
astringent dye-stuff, who inquires of me, in a hoarse, dry 
whisper and a wild, mysterious stage glare, " Are you a 
Mason ?" " I am not," I answered, with a prompt deci- 
sion, not unmixed with a sense as of relief and humility ; 
— and my Bardolph is given the go-by. Here was an 
old, old spongy subject, with red-hot coppers (all the 



LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 26 1 

coppers he had), who wanted me, if I were '^ a mason" 
to extend the Brotherly Hand (with a half-dollar of our 
fathers in it); or peradventure, not being ^^a mason," he 
hoped that I would inquire with the weak fondness of 
mistaken bucolic benevolence into his condition and be 
moved to help him with, perhaps a larger sum. But I 
was obdurate ; and one of the Mystic Tie is left to float 
upon the surface of the occasion, amenable to the danger 
so evident to Mr. Wilkins Micawber, of becoming ^*A 
Foundered Bark." 

No more to-day. I am not going either to exhaust 
myself nor spoil my readers. We must both be cautious, 
both be conservative, both learn to 

— Refrain to-night 
And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
To the next abstinence. 

Your devoted shepherd, 

H. K. M. 



Palace Hotel, San Francisco, March 25, 1878. 

Here I sit in the bay window of our room, which is 
on the fifth floor (No. 840), all alone, wrapped up in 
more shawls and blankets than would be needed in a 
second-class infirmary, writing this wandering letter. 
Meantime my companions have gone off a-shopping ; for 
it is a beautiful bright day after yesterday's drenching 
rain. 



262 LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 



^ 



In the square below me stands the Lotta drinking 
fountain. Ladies and gentlemen, hoodlums and young 
men's christian associationers, nursemaids and Biddies, 
young and old, black and white, all stop and drink. 
So Lotta extends a perpetual invitation to take a drink, 
and the cordial greeting meets with many a hearty 
response. S'pose it ran ale ? S'pose those weeping noz- 
zles gave out champagne? Alas ! a pious nun with a 
great white flying cap on her head stops to slake her 
thirst at Miss Lotta's grateful monument, and I am si- 
lenced. But, sitting here, cooped up, doomed to a diet 
of milk which is to fit me, like a lamb for the slaughter, 
why shouldn't I sigh for something more exhilerating than 
water, something more assuring and companionable than 
a town pump ? 

Looking across a great wilderness of dingy roofs to the 
hights yonder I see Nob Hill in all its pompous grandif- 
erousness. Mark Hopkins' immense, rambling, much- 
be-towered palace — big as a great tavern — lords the scene, 
for it stands atop. Beside him stands Leland Stanford's 
house, another huge building, '* with fifty rooms in it," 
says Jim, the bright and faithful yellow boy who waits 
upon me ; while further along stands Charley Crocker's 
big new house, and between Crocker's and Hopkins', 
Dave Colton's (Colton has the honor of being Crit. Thorn- 
ton's baby's grand-dad.) So you see that I am in aristo- 
cratic company ; for I look over the head of Swain, of 
Swain's bakery, of Mr. Bay, of the Bay Oyster House, of 
the Mechanic's Institute, of the Abalone Shell Jewelry 



LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 263 

Manufactory and of James W. Burnham, the man 
who has rendered himself illustrious by dealing in 
carpets and furniture. I pick my company, and I might 
as well seat myself on Nob Hill as to take pot luck with 
yon Dutchman in his milk wagon. 

Gracious ! but arn't the horses handsome and the la- 
dies gay ; arn't the coupes and landaus lithe and easeful ; 
and doesn't the bay yonder, with its ships, look cityful and 
majestic. 

There go the street cars with their eternal jingle ; yon- 
der trudges the old French flower woman with her beau- 
tiful wares ; here's a trim, fastish-looking young fellow be- 
hind a m.onstrous fine bay — a dainty stepper ; across the 
way stands a wagon heaped full of golden oranges ; and 
there, oh there goes a hearse ! 

I see a Chinaman standing on the ledge of the window 
cleansing the glass. ' He stands there as carelessly as if 
he were doing duty at the washtub. I have to think 
twice before I shudder. In the first place he is ridicu- 
lously groundwards as I look down at him, though he is 
at a three-story window. Secondly, he is a Chinaman. 
Chinamen have no more souls than so many steam pad- 
dies. Who ever got raps or taps or any spiritual manifest- 
ations from any defunct Mongolian ? Besides, what 
would a Chinaman do with himself in Heaven ? No 
Chinaman would think of entering there under the 
present condition of the Burlingame treaty. He 
couldn't be naturalized. But still, I would rather see my 
Celestial friend go in off that window sill and get out of 



264 LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 

danger ; for if he were to fall, it would shock my feelings 
and the window wouldn't get washed. 

This letter is developing itself into a sort of half 
almanac, half dictionary affair, and better have an end. 

M. 



SECUNDUM ORDINEM. 



Same Palace, March 26. 

And this jumblesome mess of odds and ends is all I 
have done in these weeks of absence, save the letter 
which I wrote just after coming here. If anybody can be 
more emphatic in thoroughgoing, unmitigated, unpardon- 
able neglectfulness than that, let him show his bald, un- 
blushing head. Don't understand me that I am ashamed ! 
Oh, no ! When I neglect a thing I neglect it ; I don't 
fumble round it in a shamefaced way, letting ** I dare not" 
wait upon *^I would," like the cat in the adage; I leave 
it to its own fate ; I let it be orphaned and become desti- 
tute ; I forget it and live as if it were not. This is recu- 
peration — the absolute rest of the beggar who suns him- 
self in warm corners ; the fuU-vermined laziness of your 
true red man of the desert. The man who has not 
within him this self-assertive, inborn, irrepressible indo- 
lence, this gift of total abandonment, is an exemplar 
of the too refining process of civilization ; he illus- 
lustrates that man is made for work and not work for 
man ; that letters and the warp and woof of society have 



f 



LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 265 

robbed him of his good inheritance of savagery; and 
that the possibihty of his virile observance of natural 
laws in their primitive force as in disregard of the laws 
that men build for their own enslavement has departed 
out of him. Your ancestors and mine were roving, riot- 
ing, skin-wearing, man-slaying and man-enslaving Pad- 
dies, who bestrode the bogs of the old sod and lived by 
the strong right hand and the nimble finger. And the old 
blood will have its way, now and again. 

Mrs. Toodles probably lives here. At all events I 
hope she does, for her sake. Yonder's a man (I know it's 
a man for see the head of him), who seems a compound 
of wisp brooms, small mats, feather dusters and diminu- 
tive baskets. He, it is needless to say, is an itinerant 
merchant, a street-hawker ; a man to attract the attention 
of frugal housewives and bachelor's hall men ; and a man 
after Sarah Toodles's own blessed heart. There goes a 
van with a disabled what-not, a rheumatic rocking-chair 
and an eruptive looking glass. Mrs. T. is most undoubt- 
edly the early bird who caught that convocation of second- 
hand worms. And here's the forlorn sister who sells 
neck-ties at two bits apiece. She has been about fifteen 
years old since the outbreak of the late war of the rebel- 
lion. I know what I am talking about ; for I have had 
an intermittent acquaintance with her all these years of 
war and peace. I think she is a niece of old man Too- 
dles himself You will remember that he distinguished 
himself in the neck-tie as well as the kid.glove business. 
The boy who sells three papers of pins for a bit, and the 



2 66 LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 

dilapidated gentleman with the glazy-looking silk hat who 
stands on the corner and makes much reiteration of his 
proffer to sell the passing pedestrian " three white hand- 
kerchiefs for a quarter," these still linger. They lose 
their interesting character with time ; but they are whole- 
somer objects to my fancy than the many buttoned 
flunkies who sit so bolt upright on my snobbish friends' 
carriages, playing the unmanly part of footman where no 
footman should be. But what makes all bootblacks like 
to fence with short stubby bits of old laths ? What makes 
shop-boys with jackets just ready to sprout coat tails, for- 
ever smoke cigarettes, and be forever boxing with one 
another ? What makes my leisure friend yonder with the 
crook-neck cane quicken his pace when he all at once 
discovers himself walking beside a brace of Chinamen ? - 
If he only knew it, he looks more like an officer of the 
law marching John to justice than like a companion of 
these Celestials. 

I haven't done the theatres much. Was at Baldwin's 
for a short time one night. What a charming little thea- 
tre it is, to be sure. I never saw anything so barbar- 
ously splendid — ^and splendor, to be perfect and in keep- 
ing with itself, must be of the barbaric type. What but 
the trappings and suits of a barbaric age which finds, 
in our vicinage, exempHfication in the Piute's or the 
Washoe's painted face and his love of beads and feathers 
and strong colors, makes my quiet, retiring, Sartorian 
friend, Brian O'Linn, leave his bench and his beeswax to 
put on his head a great grizzly shako, more than half as 



LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 267 

tall as himself, and cover his body with such an absurd 
superfluity of green cloth and gold lace ? The savage 
love of splendor ! And why not Baldwin, the descend- 
ant of Irishmen, as fully and legitimately given o'er to 
the splendors of inherent savagery as his tailor friend just 
mentioned. Here, pendant from the beautiful arch of 
the proscenium are great folds of heavy satin, all of the 
royal purple — the chosen color of great kings and mag- 
nificent emperors. And this precious fabric is in keep- 
ing with the house, throughout. It is superbly rich. If 
I owned it, I would hoist little Gates into it and dead- 
head all Carson there for a full year. Oh! but I'd do 
the handsome thing an' I struck a bonanza. 

Next to the Bowery Theatre, the Grand Gpera House 
on Mission Street has the biggest stage in the United 
States. So you may be sure they produce Sardanapalus 
there with great effect. I sent some flying scouts in there 
— a trifle of infantry under escort — to attend the matinee 
on Saturday and they report it very gorgeous. It may be 
interesting to some of our deluded Southern brethren to 
know that Mr. F. C. Bangs, who does the heavy business 
in this play of Sardanapalus, was an officer in the army 
which represented the Lost Cause. So that Bangs even 
now brandishes the scimiter of melodramatic fire and 
fury as erst he swung aloft the falchion of war. He has 
not turned his sword into a ploughshare ; but he has ex- 
changed the snare-drum of the battle-field for the kettle- 
drum of mimetic conflict May the peaceful bangs with 
which he bangeth put scrip within the lids of his lean, 
Confederate wallet ! 



2 68 LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 

I am beginning to wander and become aqueously dis- 
cursive, that is to say watery, insubstantial and scatter- 
ing. I had better give, and take, a rest. m. 



At my B ay-Window in the P. H.. May 30, 1878. 

Swathed in many a stout flannel, your sojourning 
Shepherd visited the strand the other day. We went 
by way of the great new Park and snuffed the on-coming 
salt sea gales from afar. The youngest member of the 
party was astonished at what he finally saw ; for he had 
never had a sight of old ocean's gray and melancholy 
waste before. He was much irritated, was Old Ocean, 
and he tossed his white hands about, as Joaquin Miller 
says, and shook his blenched hairs in many an angry toss, 
while great masses of his snow-like foam scudded along 
the smooth and dampened beach, before the wind, like 
so many myriads of military ghosts of dead tempests, 
lashed to death upon the sullen sands, and doomed at 
last to leave the depths and find a Boreal oblivion upon 
the ever assaulted shore. When the shock of a mount- 
ing and trembling and hopelessly broken wave pelted 
itself against the Seal Rocks, the up-heaving of the spray 
was very terrible and very grand. From the porch of the 
Cliff House, the view, beachward, taking in the perspec- 
tive and great ranks of inpouring waves, marching in 
columns of division, here massed and there in echelon, 
was very impressive and fascinating. I have seen the 



I 



LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 269 

surf there many times before ; but I never saw it when it 
was so angry and so beaten into vast fields of foam. 
Dinah Muloch Craik strikes the key which Hkes me well 
when she says : 

O ever solitary sea ! 

Of which we all have found 
Something to dream or say, the type 

Of things without a bound. 

Love, long as life and strong as death; 

Faith humble as sublime ; 
Eternity whose large depths hold 

The wrecks of this small Time. — 

Unchanging, everlasting sea ! 

To spirits soothed and calm 
Thy restless moan of other years 

Becomes an endless psalm. 

And it is something to think of, up here in this high 
perch of mine, that this same sea has been pouring its 
battalions of far-stretching surf-waves upon the shore 
since Time, whose beginning we can neither trace nor 
comnrehend, first kept the seasons and noted the rising 
of the stars. Says Byron in his well-known Apostrophe 
to the Ocean : 

Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow ; 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

And we all sat and wondered ; and each kept catching 
the other exclaiming, ^^There! there! Oh, what a big one; 
and Oooo ! see him curl over and go all to foam and spray; 
and Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! see that one spurt up all over the 



270 LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 

rocks ! " "I wonder it doesn't scare the seals" says the 
man in the roundabout. 

Miss Cora Leotard is evidently in the show business 
on a small, peripatetic scale. Just now I saw a cavalcade 
consisting of three wagons, a boy on a white pony cov- 
ered with a circus-fied looking cloth, and a trio of gamins, 
each clothed with a white cloth poster, before and be- 
hind, as if untimely arrayed in some sort of sacerdotal 
habiliments or night-gowns. The wagons were very pro- 
fuse of large type setting forth the terms of an entertain- 
ment, one of whose attractions was some gift-giving of a 
very seductive variety. The leading wagon had a large 
bell concealed within its walls of poster cloth ; and from 
my bay window I could and did look down behind the 
scenes, and there I saw a guilty looking man pounding 
that bell with a hammer, giving out sounds in secret, as 
it were, to the bepuzzlement of the street. I take pleas- 
ure in thus exposing him. The wagons moved too rap- 
idly for the gamins who were following afoot ; and when 
these found themselves too far straggled rearwards, they 
gathered their swinging signs by the grasp of the naked 
hand, crimping the same out of all recognition and so 
disencumbered, ran along until they cauglrt up. The 
responsibility of their office did not seem to weigh upon 
them ; for they were discovered by this informant poking 
their sticks into the interstices of the pavement and jerk- 
ing dabs of mud at one another, as if in mutual derision 
of their momentary engagement in the advertising way. 
Thus doth familiarity breed contempt. 



LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 27 1 

The man with his clump of red, air-cleaving balloons 
has just come to grief. His property has got loose and 
mounts eagerly into the breezy air. They come sailing 
past my window like so many vagrant globules of the 
" aspiring blood '' of some ambitious Lancaster, while 
the poor hawker looks aghast and by wild gesticulations 
lets me know (unseen of him) that he does with sturdy 
vehemence damn his luck past all redemption. 

Ah me ! Yonder winds a long, melancholy line of 
funeral carriages, headed direct for Lone Mountain, 
whose great wooden cross stands in horrid relief against 
the simmering air. And this reminds me to look at the 
great towering house on Nob Hill, never to be seen or 
set foot in by its builder ; for Mark Hopkins is dead, 
dead as any pauper, and worked to death as any slave 
might be. 

But yet the sun shines bright and cheery; it takes but 
a minute for the funeral to march out of sight ; and all 
the merry street is alive with gayety and happiness and 
that blessed industry that kills dull care and robs the 
sick bed and the grave of their claims upon our too pro- 
longed attention. And this is a charming city set in the 
midst of a charming world — ^a world fuller of glee and 
content and the keen relish of happiness than any mis- 
anthrope will ever know of. 

Now, as if to wind up this pageant, along comes a soli- 
tary wagon, bound about w4th lettered drilling, the same 
setting forth that to-night, at Piatt's Hall, may be ex- 
perienced a ^' grand unmasking of temperance hypocrites, 



272 LETTERS FROM SAN FRANCISCO. 

by Col. J. Harrington and wife." Will these brave un- 
maskers get themselves drunk in public, think you ; or 
will they tipple with words merely, and let the eye behold 
how sharper than a serpent's tongue it is to prate of ab- 
stinence from strong drink with lips and throat that are 
yet scrarce dry from fuddling potables? Or are the 
Colonel and his wife earning a rum seller's fee, in a not 
wholly reputable way. Let's give it up ! m. 




LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



n 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

A SHORT SERMON. 

On Board my Iron Bedstead, Maison de Sante Francaise, 
San Francisco, April 17, 1878. 

jV/TY DEAR AND PATIENT FLOCK: Something 
in the surgical way, intermitted betwixt and between 
sundry nurses and emulcients, sedatives and the emergen- 
cies of dietetics, to say nothing of the unfavoring attitudes 
of the disabled and the bed-ridden, these have constrained 
your Shepherd to deport himself after the manner of a 
^' layman " and neglect the duties self-imposed under the 
heading above written. But with a gracious and speedy 
convalescence cometh a sense of awakening work-duty, 
as well as a trifle of that itchiness of the fingers' ends 
which comes with a certainty of recurrence to the incura- 
ble scribbler, no matter where he is placed or by what 
fortunes attended. But I do not mean to preach about 
myself; not that I am so meek and humble as to believe 
myself past praying for, or so lacking in self-conceit as to 
think myself unworthy to be made the subject of a dis- 
course upon the Eternal Toughness of Things or the Sur- 
vival of the Obstinate ; but, rather, because I don't like 
to take the risk of making so intimate a subject alto- 



276 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

gether and successfully interesting. But your Shepherd, 
for good or bad, is propped up in his pulpit — sustained 
by the pillows of the church, as it were. Indeed, to take 
a high and mighty stand, I beg to quote as not inapplica- 
ble to the occasion the words of the poet who says : 

" Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
Above the reach of sacreligious hands ; 
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
Destructive war, and all-involving age." 

When the Christian spirit which moved certain French 
gentlemen to erect and maintain this hospital had fully 
matured and manifested itself, there had grown up a 
scheme which found expression in the name of La So- 
ciete Francaise de Bienfaisance Mutuelle — or, interpreted 
into English, The French Mutual Benevolent Society. 
This admirable institution is about twenty years of age. 
As its name implies, it is sustained by the mutual action 
of the French citizens — not alone of San Francisco, and 
not alone of California, but of the whole Pacific Coast. 
I am told that almost every Frenchman in these States of 
the far west is a member of the Society. Each one pays 
one dollar a month ; and each man so paying, is entitled 
to all the advantages of this hospital, lodging, nursing, 
board and medical and surgical attendance for life. Of 
course, this system fastens a certain quantum of old, 
chronic barnacles upon the concern ; but the blessing is 
that no sick Frenchman within reach of this House of 
Health need ever live or die in destitution. I speak of 
Frenchmen as in the masculine gender, but the scheme 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 277 

applies to women as well. I and my companion are 
here as boarders. We pay so much per diem in advance, 
for rooms, fires, lights, medicines, board and the constant 
attendance, during all hours of night and day, of the very 
best of nurses. The chief of the staff of nurses. Desire 
Sorio, has been here fifteen years. He is a retired Chas- 
seur d' Afrique ; a fine, soldier-like, stalwart fellow, as gen- 
tle as a woman and of wonderful skill as a dresser of 
wounds and surgeon's assistant. He is the best man in 
his vocation in San Francisco ; and he is my friend ! The 
fact is, if any one is so unfortunate as to need surgical aid 
of an important character, this hospital, or one like it, is 
the place to come to. Outside of an institution of this 
sort, one cannot get the nursing, without which no sur- 
geon can be successful. Here are trained nurses ; here 
is a pharmacy ; here are all possible appliances ; here is 
a system of diet, prescribed by one's surgeon and rig- 
idly enforced. In the present case the surgeon looks to 
the patient for his fee. But the subscribing and paying 
member is at no expense for any attendance or services, 
however important, however skillfully bestowed, or how- 
ever prolonged. As to the hospital itself, it is beauti- 
fully situated in a lovely little park of its own, the same 
being, I believe, a part of the old Russ Garden of a for- 
mer day and generation. 

And now, indeed, am I self-belied ? Am I preaching 
or rather gossiping about myself in a most secular and 
commonplace fashion, as in the face of a promise not to 
do so? No, my dear lambs, I am not. Rather am I 



278 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

telling you of a practical Charity which not only suffereth 
long and is kind, but which beginneth where it ought to 
begin, at home. Faith without works is dead ; so is a 
watch ; so is a primary election ; so is Charity. The av- 
erage American mind shrinks from the idea of betaking 
one's self to a hospital. Penury, decrepitude, helpless 
and debasing pauperism, these ugly conditions connect 
themselves, by a sort of fallacious inevitableness of asso- 
ciation in our minds with all hospitals save those 
which are a necessary part of the organization of 
all armies in the field. It is a mistake. ^^ Houses 
of Health " are too, too scarce amongst us. To be sure 
there are certain orders of brotherhood whose admirable 
object is to supply to the members thereof what this 
Maison does to the members of the Societe Mutuelle ; 
but can they provide, even with the utmost solicitude and 
care, a corps of skilled nurses, always at hand to answer a 
bell within reach of the sufferer ? In other words, can 
anything, however well and conscientiously devised, take 
the place of a House, whose arrangements, ends, aims 
and organization are solely and exclusively devoted to the 
care and restoration of the sick and disabled? Your 
Shepherd Avould like to see his neighbors of American 
birth and training study this example of these very prac- 
tical sons of Gaul. There is a wise thoughtfulness under 
this hospital-keeping idea. It is practical Charity. It 
weeps not, yet it binds up one's wounds ; it will make a 
business of burying you, if you die within its gates ; but 
it will call things by their right names ; and with a deft 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 279 

hand and an attention that never flags and never mur- 
murs, cure you, if not past curing. You and I are hke to 
become sentimental and not practical over friends' and 
kindred's sickness; also we are in danger of subsid- 
ing into doctors' books, cure-alls, nostrums and large and 
small quackeries. The hospital shuts the door on all sen- 
timentalism and replaces it with active, prescribed, regu- 
lated treatment; and all suggestive neighbors with their 
roots and herbs ; all amateur dabblers in physic ; all vol- 
unteer amendments, prescriptions, wrappings, becuddle- 
ments and doses, these cannot so much as come within 
the outer gate or gain the favor of the porter's lodge. 
Getting cured and getting well is the patient's sole busi- 
ness at the hospital. And for these and many other rea- 
sons, my flocklings, I wish that in all considerable centers 
of population among us, we, the native-born, might have a 
Society of Mutual Benevolence, where our homeless 
friends (and they are many) might find rest and comfort 
and sound treatment and good nursing; and where, when 
any among us are hurt or disabled, we might repair, as to 
the very best place for the obtaining of needed attentions. 

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then are these re- 
marks not irrelevant under this head and on this occa- 
sion; for cleanliness is born of Order, and the orderly 
mind makes practical its Charities, and sets them where 
they may be of the quickest, the surest and the largest 
avail. 

And now perhaps some critical bell-wether of my flock, 
back there among the impressible, unweaned lambs and 



28o LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

the easy, unthinking ewes, will complain of a certain air 
of the sick room, the close atmosphere of an unven- 
tilated hospital ward in all this. Indeed, I think I hear 
the voice of the commentator, affecting the tone of com- 
miseration, say, " Ah, poor fellow, how weak and wander- 
ing he is ; how he drivels of the poverty-stricken actuali- 
ties of his wretched surroundings, and magnifies them by 
the perverted microscope wherewith he hunts for reasons 
and themes for his small preachments; he is on his last legs; 
the hospital has done for him, and he kisses the rod that 
smites him. He's gone !" Oh, worldly-wise man ! oh, ye 
Pharisees ! oh, ye blind devotees of a bhnd pity ! oh, lovers 
and rivals, well-wishers and defamers, all whose sympathy 
is genuine, and all whose solicitude is shallow and easily 
assuaged, but lead us not into temptation. God will- 
ing, your convalescing Shepherd, well of his wounds and 
clothed in his right mind, shall yet visit you, not only in 
person, to miiMSter unto you as by the actual contract, but 
with something more of virile relevancy, something more 
coherent, seasonable and vivifying. And until that hap- 
pier day, and even then and far beyond, may God bless 
us all, Amen ! m. 



EDITORIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 

MaISON DE SaNTE, SaMEDI, AvRIL 20ME, 

A St. Francisque, Cal. 

You will see, my trusting friends, that I am rapidly 
becoming a Frenchman. I shall leave here cured of 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 251 

my maladies, but I shall no longer be the simple child 
of (American) nature that you have known so long. I 
shall be of the French, Frenchy ; wedded to breakfast- 
soups, stewed prunes, sweet oil, and, not unlikely, garlics. 
So, even with returning health, J shall not be altogether 
like my pre-hospitalic self We cannot obtain great ben- 
efits without corresponding sacrifices. Even now I am 
writing with the aid of an interpreter. The following 
poem was composed by the light of the early dawn while 
I lay musing of the sights and scenes and scents about 
me. Of course I wrote in French. I transmit a friend's 
translation : 

ODE HOSPITALIQUE. 

I see the morning's rosy lights, 

And watch the pigeons wheeling high, 
"As challenging the haughty sky," 

And bathing in those airy heights. 

I see the lilac cloudlets lie 

On distant hill-tops, soft and blue, 
I catch the light fog's morning hue, 

I hear the market vans go by. 

And as the sun mounts higher up, 
I hear the garcoii's nimble feet. 
And know he comes to cheer and greet 

Me with the morning's early cup. 

*'The cup," (Ah, goody-goody heart!) 
*' Which cheers but not inebriates," 
Which gently warms and stimulates 

My stomach in its softest part. 



282 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

And so I see the yawning-day 
Shake off its drowsiness and wake ; 
And wish the cAe/ would cook my steak, 

And serve my simple dejeuner. 

Ah here he comes, my gay garcon, 
Humming the merriest of his tunes, 
Fetching the morning's dish of prunes 

And lots of Frenchy things along. 

And thus I open up the day 

And break my fast with foreign dishes. 
Such funny broths, and funnier fishes ! 

But this is Monsieur's Frenchy way. 

This question, — ah, how precious old 'tis ! — 
Qtte voidez voiis ? — What will you have ? 
Some tete de veaii ? (the head of calf), 

Or shall I now renew your poultice ? 

And thus he chatters as he works, 

This red-capped waiter from Bretagne, 
One moment ready with a pan, 

The next one rattling knives and forks. 

And thus among these folks so Gallic 
I pass my quiet nights and days. 
And learn to like their honest ways 

Seen thro' these visions hospitalic. 

I warned you, my children, that I was holding in my 
muse with the hardest kind of a rein ; and now she has 
broken loose, you see. Let no prosy ass get in her wild 
way : for she won't be stopped. A gentle, kindly hand 
may lead her ; but she won't be bridled ! 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 283 

THE BLESSED WAYS OF PEACE. 

I know that Denis Kearney is ripping and tearing 
things with a high hand ; I know that CaHfornia is about 
to take the great hazard of amending her constitution at 
a time when her commune is dangerously powerful ; I 
know that there are slander suits at San Jose and ram- 
pant hoodlums in Hayes' Valley; I know that '^ strikes" 
are the order of the day in England and Orangemen's 
riots in Montreal ; I know that the cruel war between 
the Bulletin-Call and the Chronicle rages with unabated 
fury ; I know that to-morrow is Easter Sunday and that 
Denman Thompson is still at the Bush Street Theatre ; I 
know that nobody (who ought to know) knows who shot 
Mr. Demert, t'other night while he was sparking his 
sweetheart in a sand-lot, and that President McMahon, 
m grandiferous state, will open the French Exposition on 
Mayday ; — but what's all this to me ? Am I not out of 
the world of cares, taking mine ease in mine inn ? Find 
me the man of more serenity and ease of conscience 
than this ! One word to the bed-ridden : Let's as- 
sert ourselves ; let's show this bullying, bragging world 
of healthy folk that it won't do to trifle with the cripple's 
brigade and bedsman's contingent. Let us, if need be, 
conquer a peace ! Let us make known to a bustling, 
strident, rickety world how blessed a thing is a bed well 
occupied and made the best of One of these days 
(when I write my book), I mean to indite a homily upon 
the history of beds and bedsmen. Do you know, oh 



284 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

reader of the Morning Appeal, that each and every 
man who owns a bed occupies the same more hours than 
he occupies any other one place in this world ? I speak 
of men in health, active business people wl o make a stir 
in the mart and breed controversies in the forum. Think 
you that these improve the time they lie abed as we reg- 
ular bedsters do ? No 1 They treat the blessed pillow 
and the yielding mattress and the soft sheet and mellow 
blanket as they treat their wives and their bank account 
— as matters of convenience and necessity. Not so we ! 
We keep the restful bed and hallow it. We know its bet- 
ter parts and, knowing, dare maintain. Show me a man 
who keeps his bed wisely, respects it, and meets its in- 
viting comforts in the spirit of a Christian gentleman ; 
who makes it his workshop and his place of intelligent 
retiracy, and I will show you a poet, philosopher, patriot, 
guide, counsellor, architect and friend ! A man who ap- 
preciates not his bed would look a gift horse in the mouth, 
repudiate a good breakfast and lead the mean and selfish 
life of a misanthrope and a curmudgeon. By their bed- 
fellowship ye shall know them ! 

kite-time. 

It is always kite-time in San Francisco. For the wind 
is always ready to blow and be blown. I see some young- 
ster's kite bowing and dipping, diving and soaring, not 
fifty yards from my window. The tail of this kite is di- 
vided at the lower end so that it resembles the tail of a 



1 

\ 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 285 

swallow or a horse-mackerel. This is for the information 
of the small boys of Carson. Also it might be said that 
this kite-flying all-the-year-round in San Francisco is em- 
blematical of the propensity of the average citizen here 
and hereabout to venture his paper up in the lighter and 
more rarified regions where float the etherial fancies and 
fallacies of the stock jobber, and where the gleesome 
goblins who lead us into debt gyrate and swoop and grin 
at our big mortgages and our feeble exhibit of substantial 
assets. Come, oh man whose kite has snapped its string 
and gone soaring up in the misty mid region of vagrant 
clouds and destroying whirlwinds, come to bed, pile your 
better books about you, be poulticed into serenity and 
peace of mind and forget that there dwelleth anywhere a 
less peaceful condition than your own — if yourself have 
the fortitude, the philosophy and the self-reliance to drive 
away the image and apparition of haggard Care. 

what's good FOR BREAKFAST. 

Get your sleeping tackle so well in hand that you 
can and will, regularly, waken at 6 o'clock a. m. Then 
have the gar9on bring you a cup of English breakfast tea 
— or, if you can stand it, coffee. Then, if you feel like 
it, take a ten minutes nap. Meantime, if the morning 
be cool or damp, have the fire lighted in the grate. (It 
is all fudge, this getting oneself chilled in a cold room 
either at morning on rising, or at night on retiring.) 
Now adjust your glasses and take the morning paper. 



286 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



Order your breakfast to be served at 8:30 o'clock, sharp. 
Here's your 

MENU. 





Fisk: 




Baracouta 


Flounders, 
Meats: 


Sea Trout. 


Mutton Chops. 


Tenderloin Steak avec Champignons. 
Eg-o^s: 


Lamb Chops. 


Boiled. 


Omelette with Asparagus. 
Bread: 


Poached. 


English Muffins, 


Corn Muffins, 

Tea, Coffee, Chocolate, Milk. 
Conserves: 


Waffles. 


Stewed Prunes, 


Stewed Prunes, 


Stewed Prunes. 


S^ Bouillon, 


if desired. 





This is a sample. Do not vary much from these sug- 
gestions ; eat with moderation ; ahvays take a full glass of 
fresh milk with your breakfast (two glasses are better than 
one); thank God for your good appetite and the means 
of satisfying it, and be happy. 



FINIS. 

I expect to have to abandon these hospitalic luxuries 
next week. I am becoming too robustious to be much 
longer tolerated here among the bedsmen and the incura- 
ble. When I am exiled hence I shall relapse into a ho- 
telier if not a bay-window-man ; and then — but sufficient 
unto the day is the correspondence thereof. We shall see 
what we shall see. m. 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 287 



House of Health, Ward 39, 

San Francisco, April 22, 1878. 

MY LEGACY. 

I HAVE had a bequeathment, a legacy. It came about, 
as by '^ the first intention," as it were, as follows : I 
will premise my remarks by saying that my medicine- 
man is a strong believer in the efficacy of a milk diet for 
his patients. All the milk the invalid can drink, is his 
invariable prescription in cases like my own. Now it so 
happens, that a good friend who has some valuable cows 
of his own sends me, night and morning, a measure of 
fresh, rich, creamy milk. Last night some accident inter- 
vening, the usual supply was lacking. Sol must fall back 
upon the milk ration afforded by the hospital. My gar9on 
being summoned, says, in excellent but fragmentary Eng- 
lish : '' I suppos zat oil ze meelk is boil ; bot I weel see." 
Pretty soon he returns with a pitcher of the lacteal fluid 
fresh, and as it came from the cow. He explained matters 
as follows . ^' You know zat man wot die zis morning? Wal ; 
ze doctaire he have order two quart a day leff for zat 
man. Now he ded, I have ze meelk for you." This was 
said with an earnest cheerfulness and in a tone of satis- 
faction full of encouragement. You see the point. I am 
the dead patient's heir. I have milked his estate ! Cer- 
tainly this denotes in emphatic terms, the survival of the 
fittest ! 



2 88 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

STREET CAR STUDIES. 

I am not without an eye to business. Every now and 
then I send out a female scout — a sort of civic Belle 
Boyd — to spy out the observables, and bring me a report 
of what she sees along the picket lines of civilization. It 
is to be said here that your real feminine woman confines 
her acutest observations to a critical inspection of such 
members of her own sex as come under her curious eye. 
She rarely finds a place in her note-book for any items of 
masculine eccentricity. Now^ this scout of mine comes 
in and reports w^hat she has experienced in her street-car 
rides. Being fairly observant, she has already detected 
the invariable fat w^oman who sits opposite to her and who 
always is in a profuse perspiration, always has a silver 
'^ galvanic '' ring on her red right forefinger, always has a 
great big market basket more or less heavily laden, 
and who always comes in and goes out of the car 
side-wise and under great stress of wind. This person 
always seems to have an unlimited spread of calico 
and to be very stoutly constructed abaft the mizzen rig- 
ging. Moreover, this stout female is the picture of com- 
placency, carrying about with her an air of subdued mat- 
ter-of-courseness, as if she and the horse-cars had been 

weaned on the same bottle Then comes into our 

sketch the smart coquette with the black eyes, corkscrew 
curls, enormous shawl-pin, and, what seems her grandest 
triumph, a pair of six-button kids. These marks of an 
extraordinary gentility have seen service before. They 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 289 

are of a suspicious cream color and not a little soiled at 
the tips. She has one glove on and fully buttoned. 
She toys incessantly about her locks with the hand 
that is thus equipped, diversifying her motions by a 
deliberate adjustment of the buttons of the other 
one with a hair-pin. Meantime a vast bracelet of oroide 
is ostentatiously unclasped and then replaced on the 
wrist with a sharp snapping of the spring. ("By this 
time, my scout, for whose especial benefit all this panto- 
mime has been going on, is as mad as a hornet.) 

And now trips in the little lady with the pretty boots, and 
the vivid consciousness of darling little feet. By the 
time she has showed these exquisite extremities even to 
her boot-tops and the tassels thereto appended, the spy 
aforesaid is ready to snap little footsy-tootsy's head 
clean off her presuming atom of a body. . . .But now 
Cometh an assuagement. In prances a portly city female 
of the coarser fibre, chaperoning a backward young woman 
from the bucolic parts. The couple are evidently ill at 
ease, the elder one of the pair being the least bit ashamed 
of her verdant companion, and the country girl's face 
constantly exhibiting a sense of embarrassment and pain- 
ful shyness which is alarmingly intensified when her pilot, 
in an effort to ^' show off," makes an awkward and humil- 
iating y^^/jc/^j- in clutching at the strap of the alarm-bell. 
These retreat from the car as awkwardly as they entered 
it; and the elder exhibits her sense of modified triumph 
by protruding her tongue and winking her eye at the 
bashful rustic as they safely regain the freedom of the 



290 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



^ 



Street. (My scout has by this time relieved herself with 

quiet chuckle, and feels better.) My reporter would 

show herself too badly blunted for any practical use if she 
failed to note the presence of the devout priest who, with 
his closely shaven face buried in his left hand, intently 
peruses his prayer-book, ignoring all less sacred things, 

as he cuddles himself in his corner of the car As 

to the little girls, who are all stockings and flossy hair ; 
the pert clerks, with their lofty nonchalance ; the swimp- 
sey man, who makes a weak and futile attempt to look 
sober and knowing; the rakish-looking person, who seems 
uneasy lest it should be suspected that he rides in the 
horse cars from necessity and not from a playful and ca- 
pricious choice ; the innocent pair, who cannot find it in 
their hearts to intermit their love-making while they are 
exposed to the eye of cruel criticism ; — as to all these, 
and their accompanying sights and incidents, I just scum- 
ble them in (from my scout's rough outlines), as a not in- 
congruous background. 

HOSPIT-ALITIES. 

We have a beautiful little park in front of our jnaison. 
It is divided by trim gravel-walks and thickly studded 
with trees and shrubbery and flowers ; just inside the 
iron gates is a porter's lodge. What on earth this porter 
does (who always eats his meals in his lodge, as if he 
could'nt be spared from there for a long enough time to 
fortify the inner man), is more than I can find out. He 
looks very contented and very harmless; and I have 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 29 1 

never known him to say one word or pay any sort of at- 
tention to persons coming and going to and from the 
hospital. His lodge seems to be the rallying point of a 
set of paunchy old worthies who, I suspect, are more than 
willing to be quartered here indefinitely. It is just barely 
possible that it is a part of the porter's duties to stand 
guard over the grounds, as Aunt Betsy Trotwood did over 
her lawn — not, as that good old soul did, to drive the 
donkeys off, but, rather, to enforce the rule of the prem- 
ises against the admittance of all members of the canine 
family. Conspicuously placed near the entrance are 
painted signs bearing these emphatic words : // n' est pas 
permis d'enfre avec des chiens. Of course, if dogs cannot 
enter the grounds properly mastered and controlled, they 
cannot expect to be admitted upon their own responsibil- 
ity. I guess, therefore, that the porter is a sort of a kind 

of a high and magnificent dog-pelter Under the 

trees yonder, comfortably snoozing on a bench, reclines a 
queer old woman ; and nestled on her breast lies a hugely 
contented cat. The attendants will tell you, tenderly, 
that this old woman is palsy-stricken, mind and body 
both enfeebled, and past all hope of recovery. There are 
several paralytics here — some so utterly helpless that they 
have to be fed and otherwise tended like so many infants. 
Oh, how preferable to this wretched existence is restful 

death ! We have our excitements here, even as they 

do on shipboard, at sea, and in other isolated places. I 
hear daily reports from the operating rooms ; and there 
is the inevitable death list. One poor fellow died yester- 



292 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

day morning after ten days of dreadful agony from inter- 
nal obstruction ; and another died this morning from the 
crushing-in of his chest by a wagon-wheel. Two or three 
days ago, a young Frenchman was brought in with a sorry 
•wound in the forehead. He had snapped his pistol, in- 
tending to fire it. When it did'nt " go," he looked down 
into the muzzle. Of course, it went off then. The ball 
hit him above and between the eyes, tearing the scalp, 
but not entering the skull. He came to the Maison 
ever-so-much worse scared than hurt. Desire, (my friend, 
the head nurse), says of this accident that it is rien de 
tout, which means that it is just a mere scratch and won't 
hurt the young man at all By the way, I was mis- 
taken when I intimated, as I did the other day, that the 
memberships of this society are exclusively French. Any 
white person of decent character can become a regular 
beneficiary by paying $5 for the privilege of membership. 
The dues are monthly, and amount to one dollar, only. If 
I were a single man, I certainly would become a member. 

CONCLUSIVE. 

It has occurred to me as being just barely possible that 
I am running this hospitalic strain of mine a trifle too 
long. Perhaps I shall drop the subject. Certain it is 
that I wish it were time for the hospital to drop me. 
When your ship heaves in sight of the promised land, 
nothing is so vexatious as delaying calms and perverse 
head-winds. Convalescence is a ship within sight of the 



I 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 293 

haven of health. There is but httle danger of faiHng to 
make a secure anchorage all in good time ; but the ship 
becomes an irksome prison-house what time she is back- 
ing and filling off the heads with the coveted land " so 
near and yet so far." There are no head-winds or con- 
trary currents in my way ; and what little breeze there is 
dead astern ; but I wish I could make a trifle better time, 
that's all. 



Maison de Sante, April 25, 1878. 
SLEEPY HOLLOW. 

Don't be deceived, dear reader. I am as well aware 
as you are of the small quantum of vitality in these clin- 
iques of mine. But there is a droning pace in literature 
as there is also a monotone of voice and a never-varying 
buzz of bees and whooping of midnight owls. But your 
sluggish river moves quite as decidedly as your brawling 
stream, and oft times much more effectually. We dul- 
lards not infrequently have as copious and steady and 
irrepressible a volume as the sprightliest wits ; and there 
be some of us who, like the Laureate's Brook, ^' go on for- 
ever." Think of your Shepherd's daily history. Myself, 
contemplating it, felt the inevitable rush of the poetic 
passion when I began an emotional poem with the follow- 
ing feeling lines : 

I hear the fog-horn's dismal groan ; 

I see the morning's misty storm ; 

I smell the surgeon's chloroform, 
And hear his patient's painful moan. 



2 94 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

I think I might compose a sort of oratorio whosej 
movement should describe the experiences of a day such 
as I consume with small variation or shadow of turning 
every four-and-twenty hours. As the expression goes,; 
'' I am liable " to undertake this musical task at any mo- 
ment. I beg to assuage any fears, however, by promising 
that in those breathing-places where, in the popular 
speeches of the day, the words '^ tumultuous applause,'' 
^'deafening cheers," and similar harmless stimulants are 
interpolated, I should provide facilities and encourage- 
ments for repose by interjecting periodical hints of 
"naps," "profound and uninterrupted slumber," etc. Of 
course, the allusion to the fog-horn will be understood 
without further enlargement; for who has visited this city 
by the sounding sea without having heard the warning 
voice of this hoarse-throated alarum ? As to the detec- 
tion of the fumes of a much-used anaesthetic as they 
assail my nose, and the painful notes of the surgeon's 
subject, let me briefly say that my room is immediately 
across the narrow hall from the Salle d'Operations, or 
operating room. With these unobtrusive but quite timely 
explanations I take the natural liberty to add a second 
stanza in continuance of the same subject : 

Thus art for nature finds a voice, — 

A warning voice where else 'twere dumb; 
Thus nerves grow silent, still and numb ; 

And art bids nature to rejoice. 

Now I am aware that this (which is the mere begin- 
ning of a very rough sketch) is quite widely open 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 295 

criticism as a work of lyric art ; but still I think I might 
suggest a still further movement of the projected oratorio, 
as for example : 

But while art, thus, thro' pain and storm, 

Finds work to do by sea and street. 

Her labors all are incomplete 
Till fog-horns yield to chloroform ! 

This might well be accompanied by such arrangements 
and combinations between the various instruments of the 
orchestra as should suggest the down-settling of the early 
mist, the moaning and the groaning of the fog-horn, the 
far-distant smell of a well-conducted apothecary-shop and 
the amusing but inarticulate sounds and sighs emitted by 
the patient on the operating-table. The signal service 
and the medical profession, assisted by the pharmaceuti- 
cals, might make a very handsome thing of this. 

THE SOUNDINCx SEA. 

It is quite natural to in^er. when one speaks of the 
Sounding Sea, that that part of the ocean which mari- 
ners refer to when they talk of being " on soundings," is 
meant. But I do not, in selecting the foregoing head- 
line, refer to any other than the deep, blue, fathomless 
'' gray and melancholy waste " which Bryant speaks of 
and which, being once attained, takes the sea-faring man 
out of sight of land. It is to be confessed, in all truth, 
that I have an intense longing to get far enough out ui)on 
the Pacific to enjoy the sense of sailorship wliich cannot 
be experienced nearer shore. Indeed I had a little plan of 



296 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

my own looking to a voyage down the coast — had it until 
Old Sawbones came in and blighted it with his peremp- 
tory veto. So I must content myself, for a while at least, ■ 
with hearing the Goat Island fog-horn and watching the 
sea-drift scud hitherward over the Devisadero and envel- 
op, in its disrespectful clouds, the tower-topped crest of 
Nob Hill. Here, as divinely sung by Rose Terry, is 
something almost as full of " ozone " as the tumbling sea 
itself This is as good as a hymn, and a great deal bet- 
ter than a good many prayers that I have heard : 

Sweet Summer night beside the sea, 
Cast all thy sweet life over me, 
Thy silenee and serenity, 

Thy healing and content. 

The rushing waves that fall and break, 
Unutterable music make, 
And words that no man ever spake, 
Are to its measure lent. 

The salt wind kisses into rest 
Both languid eye and fevered breast; 
The cool gray rock, with seaweeds drest, 
Gives shadow still with strength; 

The bitter and baptismal sea. 
With living water sprinkles me; 
Slow Patience sets her bonds Juan free 
And blesses hiin at length. 

I have italicised, in a sort of land-lubberly way, the 
lines in the above which seem to be the most pertinent 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 297 

and applicable, personally ! Patience and I, drawn into 
an unusual fellowship, are getting on swimmingly. 

NO VOTE FOR JOHN. 

As everybody who is at all familiar with the naturali- 
zation laws of Congress thought would be the case, Judge 
Sawyer, of the United States District Court, has decided 
in the case of Ah Yup, that no Chinaman need apply to 
any Federal Magistrate for naturalization and the sacred 
privileges of American citizenship. This decision is 
doubtless in entire accordance with law. As to John's 
fitness to receive the Boon which has thus been withheld, 
this is debatable ground. I think I have been jostled at 
the polls by full-fledged voters whose fitness to partici- 
pate in that precious privilege which '^ executes the free- 
man's will as lightning does the will of God," might haz- 
ardously be weighed with Ah Yup's. I must confess that 
I am not a thorough convert to the doctrines of such eth- 
nologists as would make race, religion or color determine 
a man's fitness for the exercise of the elective franchise. 
I do earnestly believe that that franchise has come to be 
most preposterously cheapened. So, I am convmced, do 
many thoughtful people feel. As to the almost resistless 
tide of prejudice against John Chinaman, I don't know 
but that I think that a good deal of it is due to what a 
certain critic of Professor Huxley sharply defines as a 
" slipshod deference to a public opinion which is nobody's 
private opinion." (At all events the sentence quoted has 



298 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

a good deal of what The Farmer calls '' nutriment " in it. 
It suggests the converse of the proposition, namely, That 
there is a deal of rightly grounded private opinion which 
never is sufficiently rugged and self-assertive to become 
public opinion. And more's the pity !) It is to be de- 
plored that so few of us dare to say, boldly and with the 
courage of our own opinions, just what we do think with 
regard to questions whose discussion, like the Chinese 
question, is so like to be surrendered to the passions and 
be clouded with the prejudices of mankind. But I had 
better be careful. This is dangerous ground. I might 
want to run for office one of these days, and then how 
difficult it would be to explain my position to the satis- 
faction of my Caucasian fellow-citizens. But I am non_ 
committal, so far ! One of these days I will write out a 
sermon on this knotty subject and ^^ hire a hall." 

PUNCH AS A LITERARY STIMULANT. 

Everybody knows or thinks he knows (which is pret- 
ty nearly as good), that Lord Byron wroie some of 
his most magnificent poems while under the exalting in- 
fluence of gin. Christopher North, Sergeant O'Doherty, 
the Ettrick Shepherd and the rest of '' Old Ebony's" set, 
as all readers of the Noctes are fully informed, also 
found the elevating effects of Scotch Whisky in all its 
various brewings. But all this is irrelevant here — irrele- 
vant tho' not unnaturally suggested. By referring to 
Punch as a literary stimulant, I refer to the dram-shop 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 299 

bell-punch of the " Mother of States and of Statesmen." 
And here is the connection : San Francisco is agitating 
the question of a Free Library. The Chronicle suggests, 
with its usual diffidence, that the rum-drinkers of this 
metropolis be taxed to furnish the means needed for the 
perfection of that excellent project. It suggests that the 
Board of Supervisors apply the Virginia bell-punch sys- 
tem aforesaid to the 2,000 ^^ saloons"' of this city. The 
said system contemplates one cent a drink, each drink to 
be duly registered by the punch. The Chronicle thinks 
the scheme would realize $i,ooo each day, or $365,000 
per annum. Thus, while the bibulous should be befud- 
dhng the physical man, the literary San Franciscan would 
be drinking deep of the perennial fountains of knowl- 
edge, free gratis and for nothing. The honestly plied 
bell-punch would be the means of furnishing to the im- 
pecunious reader a regular supply of that vehicle of in- 
comprehensibly Cockneyfied wit and humor, the Punch 
whose fun was not incomprehensible when brewed by 
Douglass Jerrold and seasoned by William Makepeace 
Thackeray. I beg to second the Chronicle's suggestion. 
Eight hundred brandy cocktails, duly registered, under 
this system would enable the Directors of the Free Li- 
brary to subscribe to the Morning Appeal, and in so 
doing, conform to its invariable rule of payment in ad- 
vance. 



300 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

May-day at the Maison, — i 
CELEBRATING THE DAY. 

I know of two persons who have had their May-day 
festivities already. They held their picnic in the "Salle 
d'Operations," across the hall from my w^ard. The first 
participant was a fille de joie, the lobe of whose ear had 
been rudely split by the sudden snatch of a brutal hand 
at one of her earrings. A dexterous handling of the sur- 
geon's knife made healable a wound, and the blessing of 
chloroform, meanwhile, relieved the patient from all 
pain. The other observer of the festive anatomies of the 
Day is a certain judicial personage who, by a too assid- 
uous attention to his reed-stem clay-pipe, had brought on 
what is known to the surgical profession as " smoker's 
cancer" of the tongue. In this instance the patient 
bravely withstood the acute pain without resort to an 
anaesthetic ; and he came out triumphantly, in a brief time, 
having had the diseased member duly dissected and 
seared with the actual cautery. (It will be observed by 
the careful readers of the Morning Appeal that I am 
rapidly developing into a somewhat effusive commentator 
upon the science and appliances, progress and natural his- 
tory of Modern Surgery. I feel it to be quite possible that 
I may be prepared, ere long, to amputate an aching tooth 
or reduce a compound fracture of the biceps flexor 
cruris. The profession will understand that any playful 
mixture or misapplication of terms is deliberately perpe- 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 30I 

trated in the direction of non-committal technology.) 
This mention of a disease to which pipe-smokers are 
liable is herewith presented for what it is worth. Possibly 
it may exercise a temporary depression in the kilhkinick 
market and cause a corresponding inactivity in the cur- 
rent sales of meerschaums and briarwoods. It is to 
be stated, however, that the old-fashioned clay pipe is 
deemed by the authorities to be more promotive of this 
kind of cancer than any other. So, let the " dhudeen " 
be relegated to the blowers of soap-bubbles, and no 
longer be admitted into that good society where the 
fumes of the fragrant weed are cherished, withal. 

THE AUTOCRATICAL KEARNEY. 

Doubtless my readers have observed an almost studious 
exclusion of the Kearney movement from these unexcit- 
ing Manifestations. The fact is, I have preferred, in an 
evasive and semi-philosophical sort, to regard Kearney 
and his confederates through the lesser end of the 
microscope. In other words, I have fallen into the 
fallacious complacency or mock self-assurance of the day 
and minified, which is to say, belittled, that brawny agitator. 
And after all I don't believe that I am prepared to look 
upon this noisy ex-drayman as a personage of very gigan- 
tic proportions. But there is no doubt of the possession 
of a certain degree of rude strength by this audacious 
imitator of Wat Tyler; nor is it to be doubted that cer- 
tain powers-that-be would rather have the bold Denis on 
their side than have him and his followers arrayed against 
them. Indeed, to be plain-spoken, I think I have de- 



302 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



n 



tected in certain quarters a disposition to flatter this 
autocrat of the Sand-lots and propitiate his rather start- 
ling audacity. Also I note a disposition to curry favor 
with Kearney by belaboring Knight, McCabe, Rooney 
and the rest of the discontented. The popular notion 
seems to be that Denis is entitled to the position of dic- 
tator, while the lesser lights, his rivals, are regarded as 
mere parasites upon the body communistic. Like all 
great men, Mr. Kearney has bred a mighty spawning of 
abject admirers. Even the doughty Col. Barnes, he of the 
exhaustive alphabetical prefixes, confessed in court that 
he thought Denis a man of rare magnetic properties. 
But then the Colonel absolved himself of all suspicion of 
sycophancy by stoutly averring his innocence of any politi- 
cal ax-to-grind. As to Pixley, he seems to be completely 
subdued under the crushing influence of Kearney's stormy 
phillipics. From visitors at the Maison I have heard an 
occasional hint that the so-called workingmen were losing 
their force ; that the foul fiend of dissension had got 
among them ; that their strength had exhausted itself, 
etc. I would not, if it were my " say," lay any such flat- 
tering unction to my soul. Indeed, I suspect that 
Kearneyism is stronger than ever. 

But what's the odds ? Hear your Shepherd's muse : 

DENIS THE DARLIN'. 

Had I the gift of blarney, 
I would blarney Denis Kearney ; 
Wouldn't you ? 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 303 

And I'd hush up Misther Rooney, 
Who's no better than that kiny 
Jim McCue ! 

And as to Misther Knight, 
Who keeps stirring up a fight 

Wid his blab, 
I would haul him to the spot 
Known as Kearney's sand lot 

An' sthop his gab ! 

An' I'd take that blackguard Bones, 
(Whom bold Denis now disowns) 

And stretch his neck ; 
For although he was the first 
Workman 'lected, he's the worst 

In the deck I 

And when they all were dead, 
I would bind up Denis' head 

Wid a crown ; 
An' I'd set him on Nob Hill 
Wid a flourish fit to kill 

Half the town ! 

Now nobody need tell me how bad this is. I know 
all about it. (I ought to, for I did it myself, on a milk 
diet ! ) But there is this much to be said about it : It 
is the best of its kind ; for it is the first. Moreover, we 
workingmen don't ask anything of the critics. We are 
in business for ourselves ! 

SALUTING THE SHAMROCK. 

Last Sunday a party of Hibernians went a pic-nicking 
somewhere on the other side of the Bay. On the return 



1 



304 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



trip, one of their steamers, carrying the Irish flag, saluted 
a Russian man-o'-war now lying in the harbor. The 
salute was instantly returned, and the green flag of Erin 
was honored with a fusilade of twenty-one guns. The 
corvette's crew rushed to the hammock-nettings and 
cheered the bold Fenians with hearty shouts ; and every 
son and daughter of the ould sod on board of the steamer 
shouted in return 'til Erin's far bogs quaked again. I 
suspect that this rather extraordinary demonstration was 
prompted, in part, by the recent discourtesy shown to the 
Russian flag by the British fleet iu Besika Bay. Also, of 
course, the attitude of patriotic Ireland toward the British 
Government is to be taken into account. At all events, 
the Irish citizens of San Francisco are enormously proud 
of being the first among their countrymen to obtain a 
recognition of their country's grandeur and glory. I 
think that I would, were I a Russian, go round singing 
as best I could, the Wearing of the Green ; and on the 
other hand, if I were a native of the Jim of the Say, I'd 
eat a tallow candle and toss up my corbeen in honor of 
the Czar. But what of it ? Isn't this a good deal like 
making faces at your rival's sister ? Is it up to the dig- 
nity and fell belligerency which attaches to the act of 
knocking a chip off o' t'other boy's shoulder? I haven't 
any particular feehng in the matter ; but, honestly, I 
don't suppose that in case of a war between England and 
Russia, Ireland, as an enemy of British Power would cut 
a much more important figure than she did during the 
war of the Crimea. I don't say that I should not like to 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 305 

see Ireland free ; but I do say that I think her patriotic 
sons will get a good many of themselves in a very bad 
scrape whenever they attempt a revolution against their 
English rulers, and that they will find themselves, at last, 
a good deal worse instead of a good deal better off. I 
have frequently heard repeated the poetical lines which 
inform mankind that he who would be free, himself must 
strike the blow — or words to that effect — but I have 
known a good many enthusiastic people to get in the 
county jail for making an unfortunate application of that 
axiom. Still, my sympathies are with every struggling 
people — provided they struggle my way. 

But this won't do. I must prepare my Sunday ser- 
mon. M. 



In the Haven of Health, 

(Day and date omitted.) 

My Dear Flocklings : I am sure that you will be 
pleased to be told that your Shepherd is sufficiently 
strong to be clothed in his usual daily garb, sit in an easy 
chair and take short excursions, afoot, about his small 
but comfortable apartment. I allude to this condition of 
convalescence for and because of the fact that I went, a 
little while ago, on a brief exploring expedition to such 
adjacent windows as permit a sight of some of the grounds 
that are not discernable from my own chamber windows. 
Peering curiously down, I descried four arched, lattice- 
work bowers or arbors, and each of these I saw was occu- 



3o6 L LITERS FROM xhE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

pied by some of my fellow hospitallers. In one was a 
lonesome-looking and not well-shaved person, who seemed 
to be desperately regarding the white stocking with Avhich 
one of his feet, all unshod, was clad. The next arbor 
was also solely occupied by a melancholy looking man, 
who seemed to be sunning himself, and thereby warming 
his very broad and rotund stomach. His entire attention 
seemed to be devoted to letting the sun envelop as much 
of him as was possible. I noticed that his eyes were open 
tho' his hat was favorably disposed to sleep ; and the 
spraddle of his legs denoted a very decided condition of 
indolence and indigence. He seemed a very listless per- 
son, and neither very happy nor unhappy. I should vote 
such a man a perfect right to die. Indeed, I think it would 
be the best thing he could do. On the next bench, their 
hands clasped over their stomachs, as is the custom with 
fat persons of the other sex, sat two sympathetic crones, 
apparently immersed in the half-querulous contentment 
of a well-enjoyed gossip. These women, both very stout, 
both very '' chunked," both very commonly dressed and 
both very much cuddled up to receive the full glare of 
the streaming sunshine, were the picture of that hopeless 
resignation and dependency which comes of a chronic 
and incurable malady. They are both, God help 'em, 
stricken with paralysis. On the fourth bench sat two yel- 
low-faced young men, Italians, I should judge ; and these 
seemed respectfully intent upon a conversation with a 
rather "fleshy" female, who shared their bower with them. 
Perhaps her name was Maud, and that she had been per- 



lp:tters from the French hospital. 307 

suaded to " come into the garden." But I make no 
doubt she is one of us. She looks " patient." 

^' But/' I think I hear one of the congregation rise and 
ask, " what of all this ? What's this got to do with Sun- 
day and Sunday Reading ?" 

Just this, my good woman (or man, as the case may 
be): Do you know that when Christ went round healing 
the sick, he gave his divine attention and bestowed his 
gracious power of doing miracles upon just such as these? 
And here, my dear hearers, is the Christianity of real 
Charity : It is to take care of the careless ; minister unto 
the vile and unclean and vagabondish ; help the help- 
less ; cleanse the unclean; comfort the sick; tolerate, 
aye, and feed and clothe and lift up the thriftless and even 
the lazy. Laziness is a disease which comes of imperfect 
development; and so are a hundred unsightly manifesta- 
tions which come upon the unfortunate, the lowly and 
the worthless. Charity to be charity must never sneer ; 
it must be thoughtful, forbearing, tender, generous, void 
of all selfishness. Can it be cultivated ? Yes. Nobody 
will ask if it ought to be. All are agreed on that. 

All round these grounds, or in them, rather, are rows 
of shrubbery and beautiful trees in clumps, all very sightly 
and refreshing to look upon. A monthly payment of one 
dollar, in the shape of dues, entitles each member of the 
Society to a full share of all these things. 

Don't you know that it is very Christianlike to preserve 
for the use of the unfortunate such beautiful spots as this ? 
Don't you know that the man who makes it possible for 



3o8 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



Ltion,«l 



eyes which are tired to death — tired past all ambition, 
past all hope, past everything but tears and an agony of 
restfulness — to dwell upon green clover beds, green grassj 
and the leaves of trees,— don't you know that such a man 
deserves to go to heaven ? I don't believe there is any 
hell or purgatory for him. Show me a man who plants 
shade trees in a dreary city like this, and then contrives 
a bench or an arbor where the weary and the sick and 
the downhearted may enjoy the verdure, and I will show 
you a man upon whom the Devil has no more chance of 
foreclosing a mortgage than he has of getting back into 
John Milton's Paradise. 

This is magnificent May weather ; not the fickle, chilly, 
marrow-freezing weather that you and I have seen May 
perpetrate in our time ; but sunny, balmy, heart-cheering, 
lovely. It is, as near as I can make out, one of God's 
delightfullest blessings ; and though I am not very de- 
vout, I am at least thankful. Also I am unwilling to 
wound or shock any of my fold by any skepticisms here 
hinted at or expressed. 

I think I am rather eclectic, or if not that, at least un- 
sectarian and impartial in my preachments. My church 
is a broad one. Not any shall be excluded, not even the 
blackest of the black sheep. And far be it from me to 
say which shall be upon the right and which upon the 
left, the sheep or the goats ; although it is doubtless pru- 
dent that they should be divided. Race, color nor pre- 
vious condition, neither of these must be permitted to 
militate against any of my congregation, no, nor against 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 309 

any who feel the spirit moving them to join it. And the 
bars, at the entering place, are always down ! Moreover, 
brethren, I won't have any discussions save those of my 
own inciting and conducting ; for we might get into the 
narrow ways of the sectarian and the intolerant ; also we 
might find ourselves in such a wrangle as would cause a 
schism ; and a church might as well have a mortgage as 
a schism ! 

My Dearly Beloved Brethren and Sisters, there comes 
upon me, as from a vicious draft, a chiUing sensation of 
worldliness. It shapes itself in various forms ; lately, 
however, mainly in the form of amiable and seductive 
members of the medical profession. These sit and en- 
tertain your Shepherd with curious stories of the healing 
art ; and while they remind one of the Good Samaritan, 
they are like to cause the premature coming of maturity 
and decay upon one's sermon-writing ; and so do I, 
chased and followed all too closely by the inexorable past, 
which, like time and tide and taxes, waits for no man, 
must perforce fetch my efforts toward that pause and part 
where benedictions are bred and said and the choir sings 
the Doxology. I beg the flock to rise and join with me 
in singing the following. It was first sung by sweet Phoebe 
Gary. We will sing the first and three last verses, omit- 
ting, if you please, all the intervening stanzas : 

FIELD PREACHING. 

I have been out to-day in field and wood, 
Listening to praises sweet, and counsel good, 
Such as a little child had understood, 



3IO LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

That in its tender youth 
Discerns the simple eloquence of truth. 

I saw each creature in its own best place, 
To the Creator lift a smiling face, 
Praising continually His wondrous grace; 

As if the best of all 
Life's countless blessings was to live at all. 

So with a book of sermons plain and true 

Hid in my heart, where I might turn them through. 

I went home softly through the morning dew, 

Still listening, rapt and calm, 
To nature giving out her evening psalm. 

While, far along the west, mine eyes discerned. 
Where, lit by God, the fires of sunset burned. 
The tree-tops, unconsumed, to flame were turned; 

And I in that great hush. 
Talked with His angels in each burning bush. 



French Hospital, San Francisco, May 2, 1878. 

It will be noticed that I vary my head-line. It must be 
remembered that my resources are limited. I must make 
the most of what short allowance of materials are at hand. 
When I draw upon my reserve stock and store of the 
fanciful, I must draw it mild. Hence the concentration 
of my ingenuity in head-lines. (I make this explanation 
to relieve the sympathetic reader's mind from any appre- 
hension of serious difficulty attending my own state, pros- 
pects and career. My real difficulty is in finding some- 
thing with which to entertain you, my indulgent and much 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 3II 

indulged readers). The Prisoner of Chillon used to 
amuse himself, so tradition says, in composing diminutive 
essays upon teacups and tumblers, spiders and hand- 
basins, cobwebs and combs, houseflies and such familiar 
objects of his captivity ; but I am neither a prisoner, nor 
have I a chill on ; and so my case is not altogether par- 
allel to that of Byron's Hero. So that, as is hinted to 
the unthoughtful, a hospital patient is like to find his 
world somewhat circumscribed and his subjects rather 
few and poverty-stricken. 

THE BLESSED SUNSHINE. 

1 have mentioned the handsome grounds which lie 
about this house of health. Also I think I have expressed 
some longings to betake myself thither. I was helped to 
a visit to that arborescent lounging-place yesterday. Lamb 
has some delightful sketches of "The Old Benchers of 
the Inner Temple f and while it is not to be said that 
the retainers of this institution remind me of the persons 
thus depicted, still, as I view these hospitalic fungi of 
ours, I cannot help thinking of them as '' Benchers " of 
an humble sort. I think I have heretofore intimated that 
there seemed to be a tendency among these poor folk to 
a certain fullness of girth — paunchy, I think was the word 
employed. And yet there are among these unfortunates 
a considerable sprinkling of lighter weights and a less 
marked rotundity of waist. I sat an hour or such a mat- 
ter on one of the shady benches to-day. Then, to vary 
my experience, I moved to another. I found it much 



312 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



1 



lower than the first — found it by coming down a short 
distance with an unexpected bump and thump, abaft the 
binnacle. I had been seated here but a brief time when 
a funny little woman with a good deal of shawl about her, 
and a very decided air, as if possessed of a resolute deter- 
mination to assert her rights and maintain her status as 
an invalid, steered direct for my bench and flounced 
down upon it, at the opposite end. I very soon began to 
feel myself an interloper. I was somehow made painfully 
conscious that I had got into a place where my room was 
better than my company. I didn't sit there long. I pre- 
tended to be interested in some calla lilies, hard by, and 
so got up and limped away. Scarce had I thus vacated 
my uncomfortable quarters, when my brave little assailant 
moved herself into the corner where I had presumed to 
ensconce myself, and cuddled her brave little body up in 
such a shape and attitude as left me nothing to conjec- 
ture. I had been wretch enough to intrude upon her pet 
loafmg place. I felt as if I had stolen something and 
been caught at it. Do you know that I will never, never 
sit in that place again ? 

LES MISERABLES. 

When I was a little boy — twelve or fifteen years ago — 
a kind relative who had charge of the medical depart- 
ment of a Marine Hospital in one of the New England 
States used to sometimes lead me by the hand through 
the wards of that institution. It came to my knowledge 
during these rambles that there were certain old sailors 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 313 

who hung about the place with a pertinacity which sug- 
gested a suspicion of their unreadiness to embark upon 
the raging main and renew their maritime occupations. 
The hospital authorities termed these hangers-on '^so- 
jers.'^ It was a standing joke to administer a brisk 
emetic to one of this sort, or, possibly, treat his back to 
a smart poultice of mustard. It is to be said that under 
such ministrations the ^^sojers" showed a surprising ten- 
dency to convalescence and a corresponding alacrity to 
resume their sea-going duties. I think I have detected, 
here and there, a '' sojer " among my fellow-hospitallers. 
There is a certain generic lugubriousness about a '' sojer " 
which is readily recognized. There is a labored effort to 
preserve the old limp, and even to magnify it, that is very 
characteristic. Furtive glancings of the eye to see if 
their distresses are duly observed, these are to be noted 
among the more marked symptoms. Self-pity and a stout 
appetite for sympathy are among the phenomena devel- 
oped in the ''sojer" — who is of both the sexes. There 
is a considerable basis of dry-rot under these peculiarities. 
Folks whose ambition has gone to seed ; tired and jaded 
men and women whose lives have been a weary, profitless 
struggle; poor, unfortunates wh-^ are homeless and friend- 
less, these do not like to leave the bed and board and 
shelter of the infirmary. And why should they ? Sup- 
pose they do sham a little pain and exaggerate their woes ; 
who shall blame them ? Do you know how hard the 
times are, oh healthy man of the free mountain air and 
the easily earned mountain living? If you do, or if you 



314 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

do not, let me tell you that a poor devil who has been 
sick, and whose heart for the tiresome struggle of this 
life has gone out of him, is not to be blamed (by me) if 
by masquerading a little and repressing his natural 
cheerfulness of expression when he thinks the hospital 
authorities are looking at him, he can have himself taken 
care of for some months or years when his physical con- 
dition does not demand the nursing and care of a House 
of Health. There is many a worse " sojer " than your 
professional invalid. 

A SHABBY TRICK. 

I mentioned in my letter of yesterday that the Green 
Flag of Erin had been handsomely saluted by a Russian 
man o' war lying in the harbor, here. Also I recited the 
fact that the compliment was received with great enthu- 
siasm by the Hibernian picnickers in whose honor it was 
offered. Now, alas ! all this Russo-Irish fraternizing 
galore is turned to ashes upon the very lips which cheered 
it so lustily. Captain Nasimoff, of the '' Craysser," has 
come out in a card in the papers and denied that the 
gunpowder which was burned on board his ship on Sun- 
day was, a single grain of it, exploded in token of 
anything any dearer to the true Milesian heart than the 
movable feast of Easter Sunday as observed by the 
Greek Church. The salute given, says the Captain, " had 
no political significance whatever." As the Shoshone 
Indian exclaimed when he was going to be hanged, 
'' What's the matter now ?'' 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 315 

Aren't birds properly '' personal ? " If they are not, 
they ought to be. I used to have some vain and foolish 
notions of studying law. (What a lawyer I would have 
made !) But now I have a more pronounced fancy for 
ornithology, botany and (as the reader has observed), 
surgery, therapeutics and materia medica. I'd give any- 
thing to know the names and classes and groups and 
famihes of the beautiful trees and shrubs in our ja/^dm 
here at the rnaison. And I should feel vastly better ac- 
quainted with the birds that are so busy mating and court- 
ing, nest-building and singing, flitting and feeding under 
our trees, among the branches and amid the grass and 
the flowers, if I but knew their names. Some of 'em are 
perfect strangers to me, but none-the-less pert and chip- 
per. I note some wee bits of birds, a trifle bigger than 
humming-birds and a size smaller than wrens. These 
are very busy, very abundant, very tame. Bold robin 
redbreast comes jumping along, at his old, saucy gait 
renewing his immemorial acquaintance. I also recognize 
my jaunty friends, the blackbirds. 

It is a great treat to sit here in the balmy shade of 
these delicious May afternoons, resting the eye on the 
pretty green slopes and taking in the gently tempered 
sea-breeze, so full of life and health. I think I will cud- 
dle up under a scrub oak and stay here all Summer ! 

M. 



3l6 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



Maison de Sante, 

San Francisco, May 4, 1878. 

THE EYES OF SPECULATION. 

Being uncomfortably haunted by grim and accusing 
specters, a certain King of Scotland is made to say to 
one of the more persistent of his tormentors : — " there is 
no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with." 
As to the truth of Macbeth's remark, the question must 
be relegated to the immaterial court of disembodied 
spirits, w^iose province it is to preside over raps and taps 
and table-turnings; for we may not summon credible wit- 
nesses of tangible stuff to inform us upon the subject. 
But there aix eyes in these parts which have the bright 
light of a speculative glare within them — a light which is 
never dim and a glare which is not abated by any circum- 
stances however melancholy or delicate. William S. 
O'Brien, of the Bonanza Bank is dead. Close following 
the announcement of the lucky stock-dealer's demise a 
very business-like breeze was observable in and about 
the stock exchanges and on the corners w^here buzzers 
buzz, button-holes are torn from their moorings, and the 
curbstone broker inflates himself with the superabundant 
inhalations of his own importance. It was all about the 
poor, dead bonanzanaire. Would he, in the coffin, bull 
or bear the market? Would his cold face bring any new 
life to the dead who have died in bankruptcy ? Might 
not his decease impart a new soul to the cadaverous body 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 317 

of this stock-jobbing, money-crazed, fevered generation? 
Here and there some idle words of commendation and 
regret found utterance across the clinking glasses of the 
social and the bibulous ; but the sense mainly felt was 
like unto that which is experienced when a pageant, pre- 
sented by some friendless stranger, has gone by, and the 
occasion for wonder and curiosity has passed. (I have 
heard men express a '' wonder" how much these bo- 
nanza-men will accumulate. The important question is 
quite settled in poor Bill O'Brien's case.) Pursuing its 
unfriendly comments upon the famous firm whose moneys 
line the vault of the Nevada Bank, the Chronicle hesi- 
tates, not to fling its bitterness upon the dead man's grave 
— as if his life was to be severely reprehended, for stern 
morality's sake. (An insatiate archer in shooting at the 
target of immorality and worldliness, is the Chronicle). 
Of course, there can be no vulgar speculation in all this. 
It is the obedient bending to the dictates of a severe and 
inexorable conscience! But my white-headed old friend, 
Marriot, of the News Letter loses no time, neither makes 
he any weak disguises. He means to drive a little lively 
post-mortem trade at the news-stands, and so he adver- 
tises the next issue of his paper as something which is 
going to be peculiarly attractive from being the vehicle of 
an additional chapter in the illustrated biographical way 
— the dead capitalist being the subject of pen and burin. 
How much of a speculation is promised to the priests 
and Levites who will surround his bier to-day, I cannot 
guess. But perhaps I am hardened toward those who 



31 8 LKTIKKS FROM rHK KRKNCH HOSPITAL. 

arc ovcr-cjuick to turn to their own account the victims 
of tlie common enemy. And if it were so, it would not 
be altogether unnatural. I had a strange experience 
once in my life. It was during the lull which succeeded 
the first day's fight at the first 

BATTLK OF FkKDFRICKSBURG. 

There had been a bloody fight and great slaughter on 
the day when J3urnside made his disastrous attack upon 
the rebel lines. The dead and dying were on every hand. 
A night intervened after the fiercest of the strife. Du- 
ring that night there came over from the safer side of the 
Rappahannock a flight of unclean vultures. These were 
the varlets who, for whatever pittance might be in the 
wretclied venture, did the work of advertising the busi- 
ness of the eml^almers. When day broke the next morn 
ing, dead-walls and trees, fences and the sides of houses 
and sheds were laboriously i)atched with the handbills of 
rival professors in the art of preserving from decay the 
lifeless human body. I don't think it shocked me much ; 
but it was not pleasant to be reminded, as you stood 
within the range of the enemy's fire, that there were eager 
men within the protecting lines of the Union forces who 
were waiting for a profitable harvest, of which yourself 
might very soon be a part. I don't think I was going to 
be, in any event, of the very least profit to these enter- 
prising speculators ; but I think I felt a sympathy for 
those who might. At all events, as I recollect the im- 



LEITERS FROM THE FRENXH HOSPITAL. 319 

pression produced, it was not of the most cheerful char- 
acter. It is bad enough to be killed without being ''twit- 
ted " about it. 



*' Charity V^egins at home." — Old Prcri'erh. 

My Dear Flocklixgs : — I have just been reading the 
last will and testament of the late William S. O'Brien. 
It is the humanest will I ever saw coming from a very 
rich man. By the word humanest I mean the most im- 
bued with a real, healthy, hearty, right-minded love for, 
attachment to, and thoughtfulness concerning his own 
kith and kin. The will is prefixed by the old fashioned 
exhortation, '' In the name of God, Amen;" and it then 
proceeds t«j say, upon the part of the testator, that he, 
"being of sound disposing mind and memory" makes 
the will referred to. My dead friend, there was no need 
of this declaration or self-vouching for. Your will shows 
you to have been of a pre-eminently sound mind when 
you made it. It speaks for itself 

This instrument divides the bulk of the property be- 
tween the two sisters of the deceased. But his ample 
fortune enabled him to give to his seven nephews and 
nieces the magnificent present of $300,000 each. Nothing 
was ever done so handsomely. Think of having $2,100,- 
000 in twenty-dollar pieces to hand round, this way, 
among the funeral baked meats I The .sum of $100,000 
divided among three Orphan Asylums is quite enough. 



320 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

There are certain axioms which we instinctively asso- 
ciate with some central source or authority. Thus, 
^* blood is thicker than water," is as Hke as not to be 
tacked onto Shakspeare ; and I should not be surprised 
if some of my readers think that my text, ^^ Charity be- 
gins at home," originated with some one of the Apostles. 
And, indeed, I am not sure but it does have some such 
origin. It would have been just like a hearty, whole- 
some, big-hearted, sensible man like Saint Paul to have 
said that very same thing. He was always startling the 
lazy ears of the Thessalonians, the Galatians, the Ephe- 
sians and his other auditors with such meaty sentences 
as this. 

It is evident to me that Bill O'Brien deserved to be a 
rich man ; and I believe that he hasn't found it neces- 
sary to squeeze his full-sized soul through the eye of a 
needle to get into Paradise. This is off a piece of my 
somewhat loosely constructed mantle of faith —faith with 
works, and in works, and of works. 

I think that the man who spends his life making a big 
fortune, and then, dying, leaves his relatives — his own 
flesh and blood — out in the cold, in order to make an 
ostentatious bequest to some charity or other public in- 
stitution, is a swine. And I do not believe that swine 
ever get past the watchful eye of stout Saint Peter. 
(That eccentric disciple was capable of repudiating his 
master when he got in trouble ; but it seems that he 
won't stand it for anybody else to follow his bad exam- 
ple — which is square, practical penance, it seems to me. ) 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 32 1 

The reader has no doubt noticed that I dwell with 
more or less pertinacity upon the subject of Charity as a 
theme for my Sunday Readings. I have no apologies to 
make. 

Lord Byron says : 

" Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, 
Man's conscience is the oracle of God." 

^^ But then/' says one of the brethren, '' it depends on 
the quality of man's conscience for the view it gives him 
of God, and for the view it gives him of himself" All 
right, brother; but who is going to be the judge of what 
is of good and what is of bad quality? That's the 
question. 

Bill O'Brien's kind of Christianity — so far as it goes — 
suits me. If he had been a little more thoughtful toward 
your Shepherd, oh my flocklings, and named his name in 
close connection with a stray hundred thousand or so, do 
you know that I should have found it very difficult to say 
anything too good about him in this, my very brief funeral 
sermon ? 



Maison de la Societe Francaise de Bienfaisance Mutuelle, 

San Francisco, May 6, 1878. 

KEARNEY ET AL. 

To employ the language of the quarter-racers, my friend 
Denis Kearney seems to have ^^ the bulge " in the Work- 
ingmen's movement. That is to say, he continues to keep 



322 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

himself at the head of the revolution, carrying the sand 
lots (which sounds not unlike sans culottes)^ and tearing 
into very small bits the little schemes of his rivals and 
defamers, the ward-men and manipulators of the County 
Committee. Indeed, Kearney seems pretty secure in his 
leadership. He is bolder and more ingenious and a more 
gifted demagogue than any of the rest. Yet I do suspect 
that Denis is an arrant coward. He talks too much of 
his own risks — risks such as failed to cast down the stout 
heart of Bombastes Furioso, — '' Risks in all shapes from 
bludgeon, sword and gun, steel-traps, the patrol, bailiff, 
shrewd and dun." The other day Denis unblushingly 
told his hearers that he would ask a subscription at the 
next sand-lot meeting to help out his family. This is the 
^* tramp " business — none-the-less tramp-like because ad- 
dressed to his fellows. A queer mixture of Jeremy Diddler 
and Robert Macaire, this same Kearney. He knows 
how to be dramatic, and his efforts in that line catch the 
eye of the mercurial and vulgar ; he continually magnifies 
himself and tickles the popular ear with extravagant 
threats and proposals ; and thus he continues his attitude 
of agitator and reformer. He is wise. He cannot afford 
either to be temperate of speech or hesitating in de- 
meanor. His capital and his safety lie in a certain con- 
spicuous boldness. But won't his infatuated followers 
find him out, ere long ? He paraded a hangman's rope 
at one time. Yet Bones revolts and defies him. He 
*' talks of blood and wounds" and yet resents not, save 
by bluster and noisy declarations, the indignity put upon 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 323 

him by John Hayes, when the latter pushed him off 
the plcitform in Piatt's Hall. He prances round like a 
swash-buckler, and yet his mates, quarreling with him, 
shake their fists under his nose, and call him '^ liar '' to 
his beard. So, I think there are reasons for believing 
Mr. Kearney a man of more wind than valor, more noise 
than dead-in-earnestness. I think he will " pinch out," 
collapse, flatten, become a squeezed orange. His tirade 
against Police Judge Louderback is the vapor which 
blatant fellows of the baser sort are so fond of emitting ; 
and I am very sure that the fellow's fellows will, instinct- 
ively, come, first, to get tired of him, and, next to learn, 
very rapidly, to despise him for a vulgar knave and lip- 
valiant poltroon. And ^' the mob " will let their leaders 
be anything but cowards. 

SOME SIGNS AND TOKENS. 

Whilst in the midst of the foregoing essay, a very 
thoughtful friend of mine came in and invited me to take 
a ride with him. My doctor said I might go, and go I 
did. It is a queer sensation, this returning to the scenes 
of active life after having been cooped as 1 have been for 
more than a month. Everything looks so much more 
pronounced, there is such a new individuality about 
everything that we seem to see things as for the first time. 
The perceptive faculties have had a rest, you see. Well, 
I noted a good many things I never saw before. I won't 
attempt to enumerate them all. Indeed I do not remem- 
ber many of them. But I do remember very vividly 



324 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

how delightful seemed the balmy morning air ; and how 
bright and full of life the flowers and vines and grassy 
places looked. Going out, I noted, far along on — may be 
it was Mission street — high up on the front of Mr. 
Sweeney's shop, a sign, all in red and green and violet 
letters, containing the unequivocal announcement, ^'The 
Chinese Must Go." This, I suppose, is Mister Sweeney's 
ultimatum. It is possible, however, that he is merely 
airing, in a playful way, an easy, business-like acquiesc- 
ence in Denis Kearney, his declaration. When I came 
back, I noticed, not a great way this side of Mr. 
Sweeney's place of business, alongside of a large building, 
surmounted with the holy cross, a lesser building hke 
unto a parsonage. This smaller structure is evidently a 
part of one quite extensive Catholic establishment — a 
seminary perhaps. At all events, over the front door of 
this lesser building is a sign bearing these, or similar 
words, namely : St. Joseph's Youth's Employment Direc- 
tory. (I think that is the name, exactly as it appears on 
the sign.) What and whom did I see here? I saw a 
Heathen Chinee coming down the stairs which lead to 
the door of this Directory where youths may learn of sit- 
uations, with an enormous burden of dirty clothes upon 
his shoulder. He was evidently bearing away the Youths' 
Employment Bureau's week's washing ! From this inci- 
dent I infer that there may be more than one meaning 
attached to Mr. Sweeney's sign. May be it means that 
John Chinaman ^'must go" every Monday to St. Joseph's 
Employment Office and get the washing. This is a funny 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 325 

world — the funniest I ever saw, and I have done some 
wandermg in my time ! As we were riding back toward 
the maisoit I noted a flag high in the air with the letters 
C. B. M. emblazoned thereon. Ah, I thought, as I 
looked at this proud banner, streaming in the air, this is 
probably the California Botanical Museum of which I 
have heard so much — or, what^s all the same, of which I 
imagined I had heard. I was temporarily paralyzed when 
I saw that this haughty ensign was the flaunting flag of the 
Carpet Beating Machine, its headquarters ! How sadly 
our riotous imagination will lead us astray, to be sure ! I 
note some dreadfully ill-kept streets in this our part of 
the city. Perhaps they have come down toward the hos- 
pitable inaison for treatment ! God knows that I saw 
many a compound, comminuted fracture among these 
old planks — many a fracture and many a dislocation, too. 
But my eyes came at last to rest on the green knolls and 
verdant leafage of the jai'din which lies under these 
windows ; and I ought to have forgotten all less agreeable 
sights and scenes. 

LEAN PICKING. 

Sit down, oh critic, all alone in an 8xio bedroom with 
no more animated objects about you than a wrought-iron 
frame, upon which, like an anchorite, to stretch your 
body and compose it to rest : a red painted washstand 
with a bowl-hole in the top ; a white and ghastly array of 
crockery, surgeon's basins and candlesticks ; a confused 
and confusing mass of old, out-of-date newspapers; a 



326 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

meagre pile of dusty, discouraging books; and all and 
singular the hereditaments and appurtenances of a ward 
in a hospital of French extraction, and try your hand at 
compiling of such odds and ends as I am here trying 
hard to patch together, and learn how sharper than a 
serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless and a thoughtless 
reader ! I might sketch the sad and saddening remnants 
of my lean and w^asted dinner ; I might describe yon last 
year's baked potato, so dingy and loathsome-looking ; 
I might attempt to convey to your dazed intellect a faint 
conception of this pale and ineffectual, tough and cold, 
" hunk" of lean roast beef, also of French parentage ; 
I might try to account for the very Gallic appearance and 
complexion of this meagre plate of soup ; I might apolo- 
gize for the absence of butter and the presence of 
bits of fat bacon in the green peas ; but pourquoi ? 
What for ? Why w^aste time, even worthless and idle 
time, upon such trifles ? Yet that is what it is to be com- 
pelled to resort to one's last reserves — just as starving 
mariners eat their bootlegs and make soup out of the 
soles and uppers and heel-taps. The honest fact is, I 
am an exhausted receiver. I could tell an old story or 
two ; but where is the encouragement ? How will I ever 
hear the applause ? The fact is, I am spoilt. I have 
been having too much liberty. The sunshine and the 
streets, the green grass and the mellow air, the bright 
sky and the charm of outdoor life have weaned me from 
my humble companions, and I am fain to "■ throw off on" 
them. Now I know^ just how the discharged convict 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 327 

feels. His cell and his restraint had tamed him to take 
an interest in the more humble and innocent things of 
this life. He had made the acquaintance of a venture- 
some mouse, and taught him to come to him and share 
his prison fare ; he had learned to save the good, religi- 
ous things in the- Morning Appeal, and make a scrap- 
book of them ; and he had learned the sweet docility 
necessary to be acquired before any amateur can put a 
patch in the seat of his trousers. But he gets his dis- 
charge, feels queer and strange, takes a drink of unprin- 
cipled whiskey and goes right off and steals a mule ! I 
haven't yet stolen ?ny mule; but then I haven't had any 
chance. I haven't been out times enough; and then I 
am only a trusty so far. When I do get out, there's no 
ten to one I don't steal a whole band of those useful 
hybrids. 



At the Haven of Health, San Francisco. May 9, 1878. 
SOMETHING ABOUT '^ LADIES " AND '"GENTLEMEN." 

Somewhere or other there is a meaty little rhyme which 
asks a very pertinent, if not posing, question, to the 
effect : That, when Adam worked in the garden, or at the 
loom, and Eve milked the cows, made the butter and run 
the spinning-wheel, where were the " gentlemen ?" Of 
course, in the nature of things, '^gentlemen" in the plural 



328 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

weren't to be found until Messrs. Cain and Abel had 
come upon the scene ; but it has ahvays seemed to me 
that Adam, whatever his deportment might have deter- 
mined him to be, after he had been compelled to " go 
west," was not at all a chivalrous gentleman when he laid 
the blame of that little piece of crookedness about the 
apple-crop upon his wife. Somehow it has always seemed 
to me that he showed a disposition to '" stand in " with 
the snake instead of taking Eve's part. But it may be 
possible that his side was not yet well of that spare-rib 
operation to which we referred on Sunday. At all events, 
if I had been Adam : — but that is a trifle too much of a 
strain. 

But assuming that Adam, after he had retired from 
Eden, was thoughtful and kind enough to wait on his wife 
and do the chores, lighting the morning fire and fetching in 
the wood and water, turning the crank of the washing- 
machine and hanging the clothes on the line, rocking the 
baby, and straddling round in his bare shanks at night 
when Cain got the colic or Abel had the mumps, it 
seems to me that by these signs and tokens the old man 
showed blood and solved the question as to " where was 
then the gentleman ?" Inasmuch as what had been done 
could not be undone, and they were out of the Garden 
for good and all, Adam showed a disposition to make 
atonement for a very ungallant thing, if he did as we have 
intimated ; and I, for one, am disposed to give him the 
benefit of the doubt. Assuming, then, that he treated 
grandma in this attentive way, let us maintain, for the 



LEXrERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 329 

sake of humanity, that the male side of the house was, as 
far as circumstances would admit, a gentleman. 

But, my children, there has been a very strange perver- 
sion of the term, in these modern and degenerate days. 
I do not greatly object to the venial fiction perpetrated 
by my friend, Paytriott, when addressing the assembled 
hosts of the Scullion's and ^ Bootblack's brigade he calls 
them " Gentlemen." I can forgive Mr. Slipperyellum 
when he addresses a meeting of servants of both sexes 
as Ladies and Gentlemen. These little concessions are 
comparatively harmless, and they do not do any abso- 
lutely lamentable damage. When John Puffball intro- 
duces his friend, the barber's apprentice, as " this gentle- 
man," and parades the young woman who has hired 
herself out as a second assistant kitchen-maid, as '' this 
lady," I know that gallantry has fetched up to the full 
tether of its legitimate limits. But there are circum- 
stances, now and then occurring, which justify this extreme 
limit and verge of superfine politeness. 

The thing which calls for my criticism is herewith pre- 
sented. I invite you to a perusal of the following, which 
I clip from the advertising columns of to-day's C/iro/iic/e : 

WANTED. — A Saleslady : Must understand the cutting and 
making of ladies' and infants' underwear. Call at D. Magnes', 814 
Market street. 

^' A saleslady ! " This is the age of progress. Time 
was when even '' The daughter of an hundred Earls '' 
might with all propriety be called a horsewoman — if she 
rode well. There is a much respected book which al- 



330 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

ludes to certain very amiable and gentle females as " The 
women of Samaria." If we are to have Salesladies let 
us have horseladies ! And as women whose business it 
is to sell baby-clothes must be called Salesladies, why not 
dub my friend Yardstick, who presides over . the spool- 
and-thread department of Bobbin's dry goods establish- 
ment, a salesgentleman ? and then why not dray-gentle- 
man and police-gentleman, washerlady and chamberlady ? 
Must we " stop somewhere," as the stable boy said when 
he declined an introduction to a sweep's apprentice ? 

Let us try and preserve the value of words by the ap- 
positeness and studied propriety of their usage. Thus 
they will not become cheapened by the frequency of their 
appearance or the too great and unwarranted familiarity 
of their association. The Master sets us a lesson when 
he makes Henry address the roystering Prince Hal in 
these sharp words of remonstrance and reproof : 

God pardon thee ! — Yet let me wonder, Harry, 

At thy affections, which do hold a wing 

Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors. 

Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost, 

Which by thy younger brother is supplied ; 

And art almost an alien to the hearts 

Of all the court and princes of my blood : 

The hope an expectation of thy time 

Is ruined ; and the soul of every man 

Prophetically does fore think thy fall. 

Had I so lavish of my presence been. 

So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men. 

So stale and cheap to vulgar company. 

Opinion that did help me to the crown, 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 33 1 

Had still kept loyal to possession ; 
And left me in reputeless banishment 
A fellow of no mark, nor likelihood. 
But being seldom seen, I could not stir 
But, like a comet, I was wondered at. 

Further along, the King says to the erring Prince, 

^ For thou hast lost thy princely privilege 
With vile participation ; not an eye 
But is aweary of thy common sight, * * 

Now the present employment of these quotations con- 
veys the hint which I would urge : The needful chari- 
ness of these epithets of ^Mady" and ^'gentleman." 
Let's save 'em for those who are deserving of them. 

WOMANKIND. 

I do not know what an '' Arcana " is, but I do discover 
that Emanuel Swedenborg was man enough to own up 
that there is too much of that (to me) unknown quantity 
or substance in the Biblical account of woman's origin 
for him. Says he : ^'The words ^a rib was built into a 
woman ' include more arcana than it is possible for any- 
one ever to discover from the letter." This is frank and 
candid. Still it is to be said that the surplus "arcana" 
included in this statement, although a poser to the head 
of the Church of the New Jerusalem, may still remain, and 
mother Eve's peculiar origin remain to us as presented in 
Genesis. I do not know what right •' arcana " has to dis- 
turb you or me in our belief that our good great apple- 
hungry grandmamma was originally a rib attached to the 



l^T^l LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

framework of our great grandpapa. To be curious as to 
the precise nature of the surgical operation by which this 
rib was made available for the purpose indicated is not al- 
together admissible ; all we know^ is that Adam being the 
only person in Paradise, had a corner on ribs ; and this 
peculiar part of his osseous structure being all the raw 
material out of which to make him a wife, and it being an 
absolute necessity that he should be married, there was no 
choice in the matter. It was plainly a case of rib or no wife ! 
So the bone was forthcoming. And it is my unquaHfied 
opinion that the result was very cheaply obtained. I 
think, under similar circumstances, I should consent to 
lose a rib or two myself. Of course, however, I should 
stipulate as to the color and size, temperament and na- 
tionality, age and personal appearance of the to-be-manu- 
factured article. I'd hate to trade off one of my ribs for 
a Doctor Mary Walker or the Bearded Lady. But 
emergencies make the best of us accept, even with cheer- 
fulness, the best that circumstances will allow. 

I keep finding out things. In our garden, as I have 
heretofore intimated, are many benches disposed in 
shady places, and some in sunny exposures. Also I 
briefly related in one of my confessions how a certain 
little gamy old hen of a patient routed me out and sent 
me, ignominiously, to seek elsewhere the repose I had 
sought to take to her deprivation of a vested right. I 
think I rather respected that valorous little woman. Any- 
how I had sense enough to make a show of respecting 
her. But there is another kind of female hereto attached 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 333 

for whom I have not so much admiration. I refer to the 
abdominal brigade of elderly females who not only seem 
to be constant inhabitants of the garden, but to have a reg- 
ular system looking to the monopoly of not only all the 
best benches, but the whole works. They hunt in squads, 
do these pot-fashioned dames ; and they seem to move 
about in deliberate detachments, for the purpose of 
scaring away timid people like myself After a bit of a 
stroll this afternoon, just to stretch my legs while the 
garfon was putting my rooms to rights, I quietly subsided 
into a shady bench in one of the less frequented parts of 
the grounds. Scarce had I got settled, when a detail of 
these paunchy amazons swooped down upon me ! Of 
course, I, being moved to the courtesies of the occasion, 
bowed myself off, and gave them full occupancy of the 
coveted seat. Mind you, this bench w^as in the shade. 
After a minute or two of strolling, I again seated myself. 
This time I was in the full glare of the sun. I had 
hardly got situated so as to avoid the harder and less 
comfortable characteristics of the bench, when greatly to 
my dismay, down came this same dreadful party and 
frightened me away again. They were evidently deter- 
mined to let me know that I was an intruder and that 
they meant to hold the fort. They are an awful set ! 
There is about a dozen of 'em. Their combined devel- 
opment of person, front and rear, would shame the big- 
gest haystack in Douglass county. It beats all how a 
certain grade of French women swell up after having 
passed the meridian of life. There are about ninety 



334 LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 

patients here now. At least one-half, I should judge, are 
women. With the single exception of that little old pepper- 
pod who ousted me the other day, there isn't one of 'em 
who carries a bit less o' girth than the late Gilbert Grant. 
It beats all ! And how they do hang together and chat- 
ter ! I am firmly convinced that there are not less than 
thirty-six of 'em, divided into three watches, each watch 
eight hours on and sixteen hours off; — not off the parade 
ground, but off duty at the benches. The detail whose 
watch on deck it is just now (1 have retreated before them 
to the safety of my room) are the picked veterans — the 
flower of the army, as it were. There is not a stomach 
in the entire phalanx but what will measure with Charley 
Crocker's, inch for inch ! When they sit down on a seat 
they are there for solid business. They may just keep 
their old garden ; I'll go back to the open sage-brush and 
the blessings of leaner women. 

HOMEWARD BOUND. 

My dear readers, — those who subscribe and who are 
regular in your payments ; those who subscribe and are 
not so systematic ; those who would if they could ; and 
those who borrow with regularity and criticise with 
freedom, all and singular, be warned in time ! I am 
making up my mind and body for the homeward trip. 
The raw material for these vagabondish screeds is nearly 
worked up ; I am no longer an interesting subject for the 
students of anatomy and surgery; I have learned all the 
French that can be poulticed into a man, and I am prick- 



LETTERS FROM THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 335 

ing up my ears for Carson. Be calm ! No extravagances ! 
I would rather have a sack of potatoes or a load of good 
limb wood than a torch-light procession. I would not 
take a shingle off o' any man's house : but it is sheer 
nonsense to hire the band. Besides, may be, you won't 
know about my coming until I have got there and taken 
a bath. But, no jokmg, I am going home, if I can 
manage to get loose from these sticking-plasters, in the 
course of a week or two. (I state this not so much as 
being a cause of rejoicing or lamentation as a proba- 
bility, which, like the date of a wedding or a funeral, is 
interesting to those who are interested). 




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